


Nier Automata: Listen to the Sound

by Damselbinder



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Bondage, Damsels in Distress, F/F, F/M, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Bondage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28573332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damselbinder/pseuds/Damselbinder
Summary: Set sometime before the beginning of Nier Automata, through this story 2B explores her feelings about 9S, herself, life, death - you name it. On a routine mission, the two androids detect some unusual machine lifeform activity, and discover a trap set for the lovely 2B. Her ruthless, crazed abductor is a bad enough threat, but another lurks behind her.A person ancient and exhausted, broken and terrifying.Listen to the sound!
Relationships: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	1. "Listen to the Sound"

_Pod 042 uploading scheduled report of activities of Unit 2B to YoRHa Command._

_**[Pod 042 acknowledged. Upload report now.]**   
_

_Unit 2B continues reconnaissance operations with Unit designated 9S. Units 2B and 9S have eliminated seventy-eight machine lifeforms since last scheduled debrief. One package of pre-WCS data decoded by Unit 9S: hacking revealed data referred to method for preparation of item known as 'gluten-free chocolate cake.'_

_**[Acknowledged.]**   
_

_Three encounters were made with resistance androids. Encounters with YoRHa units as follows:  
-Unit 11S_

_-Units 5B and 8B_

_-Unit 16C_

_-Unit 13E (under guise of '13G')._

_**[Acknowledged.]**   
_

_Query.  
What is the operational target of Unit 13E?  
_

_**[Classified. No further queries permitted.]**   
_

_...Notification.  
Unit 2B continues to serve YoRHa Command with exemplary efficiency. According to analysis, there is no unit that would perform Unit 2B's functions as well as 2B herself._

_**[Unit 2B's performance is not in question. Further notifications unnecessary.]** _

_...Analysis._

_Compromising of 2B would result in decrease of operational efficiency of surface YoRHa operations to the tune of 14-23%. This Pod...stresses the operational value of Unit 2B.  
_

_**[...Analysis received. End of line.]** _

_Acknowledged.  
_

Pod 042 was, essentially, a floating steel box with arms. It had no face. It had no human features whatsoever to speak of. It had no way, really, to convey any kind of emotion at all. Oh sure, it was physically capable of uttering the words "I feel anxious" or "I fear for you" or "You matter to me", but they would have sounded ridiculous coming from its affect-stripped voicebox. And yet, the android 2B, to whom it had been so long attached, could sense that something was off. Something about the slightly jerky quality of its movements made her almost worried about her little companion. But worry was an emotion. And, as 2B was so fond of saying, emotions were forbidden. At least, expressing them was.

So 2B said nothing to her pod. She simply continued moving, at a tireless, brisk jog, through the fallen ruin of the world. Through the black, cloth visor which covered her pale eyes like a blindfold, she looked upon that which had once belonged to her creators. Towering ziggurats thrust up into the sky all around her, impressive in their stature, but in nothing else. Not that 2B could know it, but the buildings through which she trod had been part of a housing complex, built as cheaply as possible centuries and centuries earlier. Vines and tree trunks stabbed into these fading edifices a violent rebuke of humankind's moment of dominance, and the edifices were no match. 2B wondered if she would end up like these ruins - falling to pieces someday, a mere relic of the species her body so perfectly resembled.  
" _No,_ " she thought. " _When my death comes, it will be violent_."

Whether she was right or not, her ruin would have been a far lovelier one than the fallen metropolis surrounding her. One perhaps might ask _why_ 2B had been designed to be such a perfectly beautiful woman, but one could hardly complain. She looked human, and even felt human. Her skin might have been artificial, but it was smooth, and as soft as fine-spun silk, with a pristine, porcelain-white loveliness that few of her creators' race could have matched. Her hair was whiter still - thick and messily stylish.

All that white only served as a sharper contrast to the austere blackness of her clothes. She was clad in a short, intricately patterned, black dress, a little puffy at the shoulders, with a pleated hem swishing about her hips with each movement. There was a section of transparent gauze-like material over much of 2B's chest, with a section of that cut out to expose a tantalising portion of her lily-white cleavage. A corresponding section was cut out in the other side of the dress, exposing 2B's shoulder blades, revealing the graceful curve of her back.

As if this were not sufficiently tantalising, the dress itself was so short that one wondered if 2B had been given the capacity for modesty at all. A slit in her dress meant that, at the right angle, you could see every inch of 2B's long, long legs. High heeled, black boots adorned her feet, reaching right the way up her shapely calves, over her knees to halfway up her thighs. Protruding a few inches further up, translucent, black stockings - as gracefully, sensuously austere as the rest of her obsidian clothing. It was only in the few inches of her perfectly rounded, feminine thighs that her stockings did not cover that the creamy-white of her skin showed, flashing like moonlight from behind the black cloud of her skirt whenever she moved. Had any poet yet lived, a sonnet or two in tribute to her wouldn't have seemed all that amiss: she was breathtaking.

9S didn't have breath to take, not exactly. There was no increase in heart-rate when he watched the way 2B's hair swished. His eyes did not dilate as he watched her sashaying, effortlessly sexy strut. He did not gulp as he caught glimpses of her bare thighs, did not sweat as his android eyes noticed how 2B's stockings pinched into her skin, promising a softness that lay behind her austere appearance. He didn't betray himself at all. But he found it hard to take his eyes off her.

" _Come on, Nines, cut it out_ ," 9S thought. It was hardly news to the thin, boyish Scanner that he was attracted to 2B, but he normally didn't find himself quite so focused on her...assets. He started to wonder if it was the environment, the degraded, crumbling ruin around him that made his eyes seek to rest on 2B's opulent curves so often, if he was seeking shelter in her, somehow. It was a rather pretty thought - but a wrong one. 9S was overanalysing, and he was overanalysing for the same reason that he was behaving in the way that he was overanalysing. He was bored.

9S was the most advanced YoRHa model yet - a scanner, designed for reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and loaded with a boundless combination of scientific acumen and curiosity, which 'Nines' himself had augmented with sophisticated combat protocols. Pilot, scientist, scout, warrior: all of these things, and more. And so it was not as if he thought traipsing endlessly through mile after mile of fallen, rotten cityscape was _beneath_ him - it was just that it occupied a microscopic fraction of his brainpower.  
"Do you ever wonder about the way humans constructed their societies?" He blurted the question out, almost stumbling over his words from his frustration at keeping his mouth shut for so long. "It's just these buildings look so cheap compared to the ones in the parts of the city near the river. It's more like closets to stuff people into than apartments you'd want to live in." The dam, now burst, could be easily repaired, and 9S' curiosity poured out in a torrent. "I know that it's probably a lot more space than we get for our rooms in the Bunker, but we're at war, you know? Humans in peacetime shouldn't have had to live like that. There are always going to be cheaper accommodations for poorer people, but this was a prosperous city - even its worst shouldn't be _that_ bad. I wonder if it's inevitable for humans to have stratified economic -"  
"Cut the chatter, 9S." 2B's tone was cold and impatient.  
"Hrrm," the scanner grumbled. "You know, I'm not sure other YoRHa operatives are so strict about talking as you are, 2B."  
  
Other operatives didn't have to be strict. Other operatives didn't have to be cold. Other operatives didn't have to be disciplined, and curt and stiff. But that was because other operatives weren't utterly charmed by their partner's friendliness, curiosity and intellect. Other operatives didn't want to curl up in bed at night with their partners and whisper the secret fears of their souls. Other operatives didn't want to place their heart in their partner's hands and have them feel that they held such tenderness within their breast. Other operatives didn't have to place a cage around themselves to stop it all just spilling out.  
  
Other operatives hadn't had to execute their partners for discovering YoRHa's secrets. Hadn't had to watch them die over and over and over and over and over and -

"Do you ever wonder what it'll be like once we've beaten the machine lifeforms; when the humans come back from the Moon?" 9S said, unperturbed by 2B's reproof. More and more it seemed that he'd begun to sense that 2B's heart wasn't in her castigations. "And I don't mean right away, but say in a few hundred years when the human population is back in the billions." He said the last word with awe. " _Billions._ Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that many androids all existing on the same planet at the same time? I... I genuinely can't even think what it'd be like?"  
" _No, I can't!_ " 2B thought." _It seems scary almost. I'd be worried that I'd just sink away into the masses. Like being one of six or seven billion would almost be the same as not existing at all._ " She said: "There's no point speculating."

  
"I suppose it might be a little frightening to be one face in such a huge crowd. You think the humans ever felt intimidated by their own numbers?"  
" _Hmm... it's possible,_ " 2B thought." _You and I both have an instinctive dislike the idea of such vast masses, and our psychology is probably at least comparable to theirs._ " She said: "We'll never be able to understand them."  
"Or maybe they found it comforting," 9S suggested. "Humans are biological organisms, ultimately. It's possible their inner drive to propagate themselves makes them feel satisfied in such large numbers."  
" _I don't know about that, Nines,_ " 2B thought." _Perhaps the explanation is simpler. It was just normal to them to have large numbers. Most of them probably didn't think about it._ " 2B replied: "You don't need to make everything so complicated."  
"I know, I know, but - I just find them so interesting, my imagination runs away with me. I'm not the only one, either. On our last trip to the Bunker I was hanging out with a couple of Gunner units - you know 4G and 22G? - and 22G had the weirdest ideas about human reproduction, and -" You couldn't see it because of the cloth visor he was wearing, but 9S had just squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment, his self-awareness having finally caught up to him. "I'm sorry. I'm boring you."  
" _Not at all,_ " 2B thought. "Not at all," 2B said.

The response was so unexpected - to both androids - that they stopped in their tracks. Even 042 turned in surprise. 9S' Pod 153 also stopped, but only because the others had. Had it had hips, it would have put its arms akimbo in annoyance.  
"It's not that you bore me," 2B said, realising a complete climbdown was impossible. "It's just that I don't think now is the time."  
"So you _are_ interested in human society," 9S said, smiling.  
"Of course I am," 2B said. "Don't you -"

She'd been about to say "don't you remember when we found that museum?". They'd found a whole art museum, partly buried underground, and had spent weeks stealing every moment of spare time they could to explore it together, 2B leading 9S around by the hand in shared wonder at the treasures concealed within. But that hadn't happened to 9S. Not this time around. As far as 9S knew the two of them had met for the first time three months ago in a briefing at the Bunker. The museum had been the first time around, when 2B had openly joked with, when she'd teased him about his inability to handle any weapon heavier than a lead pipe, when she'd once had a conversation with him about whether deserts or forests were more beautiful landscapes that had meandered along for hours. She'd killed 9S many times since then.

He returned every time, of course. If 2B had had to _really_ kill him, to end his life utterly, not in ten thousand years could she have summoned the resolve to do it. But whenever he returned he was a stranger again. Every time it made her colder. Every time she had to hide herself more, for her own sake. Every time she grew better at concealing her true face from him, and that made it much easier when the end came, as it always did. But as she grew more skilled at hiding her own curiosity, her own intellect and soulfulness and affection, she knew full well that she was making herself... dull. Someone in whom 9S could have little interest at all. That was part of the point. But that didn't make it hurt any less. Thank god, then, for the the machine lifeforms.

Pod 153 spotted them first. They were medium-biped types, about a third again the height of 2B in her heels, and much broader. They looked simple: nearly spherical heads; small, beady, yellow eyes; simple, flat shapes making up their arms and legs; and a torso the shape of an inverted flower pot. But these machines had warred with the androids for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, impossible to exterminate, adaptable, hardy, resilient and deathly effective. The two androids had killed many machine lifeforms in the past, but they never grew complacent. One never knew what new tricks their foes would employ.

There were twenty of them, moving in formation right at the androids, and it was clear that they had chosen this place quite deliberately. 2B and 9S had been approaching a narrow gap between two of the unsightly, decaying buildings, and the machines had arrayed themselves to make it impossible for the androids to get around them.  
"What do we do?" 9S asked. It wasn't fear or lack of confidence that made him ask this; merely recognition that 2B was by quite some way the superior warrior. She would know better.  
And sure enough, it took the white-haired siren only a moment to think of an effective stratagem. "Their tactics make sense, but if you look at their formation, it's like they're treating the buildings as solid, impassable blocks. They're probably relying on satellite imaging for their deployment." She pointed to a window, or at least a hole that a window once occupied, four storeys above them. "Head there. Use your Pod to surprise them with a long-range ambush. In fact..." She looked up. "Pod 042, go with 9S and Pod 153. Support the ambush."  
042 flitted a little to one side. "It is this Pod's tactical analysis that support could be better provided in close proximity to Unit 2B."  
2B had to suppress a smile. 042 had always been very protective of her. "I'll be fine. You'll still be supporting me, Pod."  
"... Acknowledged." It began to hover towards the point 2B had indicated, followed by 153. If its programming had allowed it, it would have told 2B to be careful. But its creators had not bothered to give it the ability to express itself. They'd given 042 a soul, and then locked it into a plain, metal cage.

9S was hesitant as well, but not for the same reason. He had every confidence in 2B's ability to handle herself - it was simply that he'd rather have been in the thick of the melée himself. He drew his blade, which appeared in a flash of light, held a few inches away from his palm by magnetism, which was the only way he could swing a sword anywhere near as hard as 2B could. He spun it around a few times, and for a moment it almost seemed like he was going to charge in blindly. But he wasn't stupid. He restrained himself, and followed 2B's plan, slipping into the shadows of the broken building.

2B had watched 9S' moment of hesitation. She'd seen the look on his face when he'd drawn his sword, seen the eagerness to fight. It worried her, because it was new. The first time she'd known him, before she'd ever spilled his blood on her weapon, he'd hated fighting. He'd joked about being allergic to sweat and, while he was perfectly competent, he hadn't been a good fighter and had seemed uninterested in becoming so. But after his second-most-recent execution, he'd been different. He'd programmed himself to be able to wield a sword, something that none of the other S units could do with any effectiveness. And then after his most recent return to life, he'd begun to train to become really _good_ at fighting, and to enjoy it too. It was a little disturbing for 2B to see her sweet Nines had some real bloodlust in him. It made her afraid. Afraid that his resets weren't really resets. Afraid that there was some part of him that knew what she was doing to him. Afraid that she was turning the man she loved into something violent and ugly.

It was a relief when she drew her sword to hand, her larger greatsword floating in place behind her back. The machines were close to her now, and picked up speed when they saw her approaching them. As they got closer, she noticed that they were unusually coloured: black with red heads. It was of interest, but not relevant to the plan. She just needed to kill them. As they got closer and closer, she realised they were vocalising. She wouldn't have used the word 'speaking' because they were just mindless robots, but it definitely sounded like speech. They increased in speed, and their vocalisations grew louder. They raised great axes above their heads, and 2B gripped her shortsword tightly in preparation. She was in position now, so she crouched low, making it more obvious that the slit in her skirt went all the way up one side of her slinky, curvy hips. She waited, sword raised, ready to strike, lovely as a flower and deadly as a viper.

"To the left of the road! Six! To the left of the road! Six! To the left of the road! Six!" the machines chanted. It was nonsense. They'd just picked up some words from somewhere and were repeating them like parrots. They _were_ just machines.  
"To right of to left of hell shell of the road! Six! To the left of the right of the road! Six!" They were really screaming it now, the newly added words shrieked at frightfully high pitch. "CANANANANANANANANANANANANAN!" they added, in unison.  
"What the hell?" 2B muttered. The machines always found new ways to surprise her.  
"CANANANANANANANANANAN to the left of the right of the front of the -"

This time they did not finish their cry. From the fifth floor of the building that they had so mechanically ignored, two thick beams of light fired in two great cannonades directly into the middle of the machines' ranks. Several of them were blown to pieces instantly, more were crippled, and the others were scattered. The lasers - fired by Pods 042 and 153 - were followed by salvos of light missile and machine gun fire, not strong enough to destroy machine lifeforms by themselves, but enough to pick off the injured, and enough to confuse the survivors. They were not, therefore, prepared for 2B.

The first machine to fall by her blade had been trying in vain to find where the weapons fire was coming from when it was laterally bisected with a single, devastatingly accurate, double-handed swing of its enemy's greatsword. Before the machine's halves had hit the ground, 2B had spun around, the skirts of her dress flowing around her in a wide circle, completely exposing her long legs, her pelvis, her hips. Her motion, her skill, and her strength were too fiercely graceful for this exposure to be anything other than artful, and beautiful. Her shortsword cleaved a machine's head from its neck, before being hurled into the chest of another, hitting it dead centre. It fell instantly.

It became clear to the remaining machines that the nimble, lily-white maiden dancing between them was the true threat. One of them swung its axe at her back, but she seemed to fade into mist at the fall of the stroke. The machine saw four of her appear out of nowhere, and was so perplexed that it spun around in a comical little circle. It did not see 2B descending on it from above, cutting through its armour plating and severing its metal brain from its skull with two quick strokes. She balanced on its standing corpse for a moment, her poise and control of her own body utterly breathtaking.

The machines tried to surround 2B, but this only meant that they bunched up again - just in time for a second salvo of laser fire. 2B leapt into the air in a dizzying, acrobatic twirl, timing her jump perfectly to avoid the Pods' attack. More than half of the remaining machines were annihilated in a second, huge amounts of dust thrown up into the air from the destruction of the already half-disintegrated road on which they fought. One machine had managed to stand exactly between the two blasts and survive unscathed. But its luck didn't last: the sylphlike, sumptuous swordswoman spotted it as she landed, carved a 'z' shape into its torso even as her feet hit the ground, slicing it into three pieces.

"Amazing," 9S muttered to himself, watching 2B battle from afar. The way she moved, the way she struck, the way she danced between the machines with such obscene skill - she wasn't just well trained, or powerful, or skilled. He could see her soul shining through in the way she fought: grace and creativity and lively, fierce intelligence - all the things she hid from him when they spoke he could see blazing forth when a sword was in her hand.

Pod 042 would normally have been admiring 2B just as much. For he too had been dazzled by her skill many times, even if the only way it could express this was to say "combat performance analysis: satisfactory." But this time, he was giving the battle very little attention. There was...

... well 042 didn't know exactly. Some protocol, some piece of his programming that was so deeply hidden that it was likely a relic of the most ancient features of his programming architecture was sending 042 a strange, unclear signal. It gave the Pod a sense of profound unease. It caused him to throw his scanners wide, though he was... fearful of what he might find. And he did find something.  
[Pod 042 requesting private communiqué with Pod 153].  
[Accepted.]  
[Priority item: YoRHa-type android detected at distance of 1300 metres. Identity unknown.]  
[Scanning...] It took a little longer than usual, since 153 was devoting much of its processing power to battle calculations. [Finding confirmed. No YoRHa records indicate presence of additional androids in this sector. Caution advised.]  
[Concurred.] And yet, 042 was not satisfied that the matter was settled. This new android, whoever or whatever they might have been... 042 _knew_ that they were not the ones making him frightened. [Sub-priority. Request diagnostic of following subroutine.] 042 forwarded a copy of the code that was giving him this unease.  
[Accepted...] Again, 153 paused to consider. [Analysis inconclusive. Program does not appear in this pod's code. Program is being run on emulator software present in Pod 042 but not present in this pod. No further information available. Correction,] 153 added. [Filename found.]  
[Query: what is the filename?]  
Humans, indeed, even androids, would not have been able to understand the subtleties of Pod-to-Pod communication, where they were not wholly limited by the blunt formality of their verbal programming. So only 042 understood that 153 was perplexed, and frightened in a way it could not explain.  
[Filename,] said 153 [is 'redeye.cpp'.]

Unaware of the silent drama between the two pods, the last survivors of the machines banged their axes against their chests, resuming their battle cry:  
"CANANANANAN to the left of the of the right of the front of the road! Six!" They began swinging wildly, one even knocking another machine on its back by mistake. It looked rather wild and fearsome, but it was a clear sign to their enemies that the battle was essentially over. 2B exchanged her shortsword for her greatsword, and sliced into the lower back of one of the machines. She'd hit the thickest part of its armour, and hadn't had time for a full-strength, unimpeded swing, so she wasn't able to cut right through it. She still killed it, though, her sword cutting right through its spinal column. But 2B had jammed the weapon in quite effectively. She pulled at it, found it to be stuck. She wrapped both hands around the hilt, lifted one of her legs - high enough that she put her foot above the level of her hands - to push against the machine's back.

"CANANANANANANAAAAAAN!" One of the last machine lifeforms left saw that the android appeared to be struggling with her weapon, and struck back. It swung its axe horizontally at her, perhaps meaning to imitate the way she'd just killed its ally. 2B saw the attack coming and was out of the way well in time - but the problem was the axe. As the machine lifeform swung, the bolt connecting the head of the axe to the shaft snapped, and the axehead flew off right at 2B's head. She pulled her neck to the side, avoiding the blow by a hair's breadth - but it snagged her visor, pulling it off her face, revealing her wide, blue-grey eyes. But this did not give her sight - it robbed her of it. At least, it robbed her of her external targeting systems. This meant that she no longer knew exactly where 9S and the pods were, didn't know exactly where to stand to avoid getting caught in their crossfire. But she couldn't be hesitant either - that would mean death.

So she surged forward, snatching the axe from the machine she'd just killed, and bringing it straight down on the head of the one she was fighting. The axe landed with a groaning, creaking, metallic crunch, smashing open the top plate of the machine lifeform's head. Black fluid spilled out in regular, pulsing spurts; circuits sloshed about by the liquid seemed to squirm like dying snakes; and the machine itself groaned and cried out in a way that was far too similar to an android's death throes for 2B's liking. It collapsed to its knees, still muttering its nonsense battle cry. It was distressingly pathetic.

There was one more. It saw its last ally slain, and screeched violently, brandishing its axe. 2B was about to rush in and would have killed it without much resistance, but at the last second a volley of machine-gun fire from Pod 153 forced 2B to dodge back at precisely the wrong moment. She tripped, and landed on her back, crying out in pain as a broken piece of one of her foes' corpses jabbed her painfully between her shoulder blades. She saw the last machine lifeform standing over her, axe raised, a faceless metal monster terrorising the soft, vulnerable beauty who lay defenceless at its feet.

That is, she was _not_ defenceless. She had plenty of defence. She was brimming with defence. One might even have described 2B as positively defence _ful_. But 9S, still watching from a the fifth floor of one of the ruined buildings, was not of a mind to look past appearances. He saw 2B in danger, and he acted without thinking - by leaping out of the window. He reached out his right hand, and did the one thing he could do that 2B couldn't: he hacked directly into the machine lifeform's brain.

From 2B's perspective it looked like the machine lifeform had just exploded for no reason, its head flying off and its limbs crumbling into a messy pile of bolts and screws and greasy lumps of metal. She knew quite well why it had happened: 9S had saved her. Well. He'd _tried_ to save her. Really he'd just saved the machine the discomfort of getting a sword through the face. But 2B liked the thought that he'd been gallant.

2B hopped to her feet with coiled, liquid athleticism. She surveyed the battlefield, the broken bodies of their enemies. It did not grieve her, but it gave her little satisfaction. A few hundred yards away, she saw 9S dusting himself off. A fall of five storeys wasn't much to a YoRHa android, but he wasn't as sturdy as a B-type unit. She saw him adjusting his visor, brushing dust out of his hair. He noticed her looking at him, and gave her a cheery little wave. She almost laughed. He was still the Nines she'd known.

"CANANANANANAN to the left - to the right - to the in right in boldly mouth into the road into the road the six six six six six six -"  
One of the machines was still alive. Well, near enough. It was the one whose skull 2B had caved in with an axe. It was crippled, but still clinging onto some measure of life.  
2B approached it, curious and a little sympathetic. She retrieved her greatsword as she walked towards it, brandishing both her blades at once. She intended to put the poor thing out of its misery.  
"CANANANANANANANAN," it droned, its yellow eyes flickering, staring off into space. "CANANANANANAN." Its head jittered, twitched, as its remaining vital systems shut down one by one. And then, possibly by sheer chance, its head jolted more definitively to the right, looked 2B square in the face.  
"CANANANANANANANANANANAN!" it shrieked. "CANANANAN -" And then it went completely silent. No juddering. No hissing, no spitting, no shrieking. "Canan," it said, quietly, except it was clear now that it was not babbling. It had been saying 'cannon'. And it went on.  
"Cannon to right of them.  
Cannon to left of them.  
Volleyed and thundered.  
Stormed at with shot and shell.  
Boldly they rode and well,  
Into the jaws of Death,  
Into the mouth of hell,  
Rode the six-hundred."  
  
While 2B, the first definitively sentient being to hear the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson in tens of thousands of years, stared in bafflement at the machine-poet, its body began to glow. Its head popped completely off, and some kind of pylon raised up in its place, pulsing with energy, coursing with electricity. Before 2B had time to do anything, before she could process 9S' hoarsely screamed warning, the pylon erupted with a great pulse of energy, bursting outward in a shimmering indigo sphere. It drained every drop of energy from the machine's power supply, killing the lifeform instantly. The blast had no force. Not one stone was jostled. Despite receiving its full power right to her face, not one hair on 2B's head was even moved out of place. Not one square centimetre of her perfect skin was damaged. But then, that's not what an EMP was for.

"AAUUUUHHHHHHH!!" 2B cried out, as her entire body tensed and convulsed. She couldn't move, her whole body betraying her, refusing her commands, and making war on itself. Her arms trapped themselves with tension at her sides, her slender, gloved fingers curling with excruciating tightness against the hilts of her swords. Her thighs and buttocks clenched, her sumptuous legs seizing up, so tense that she was practically standing on her tiptoes. She shook, her curvaceous body vibrating like she was being inflicted with her own, private earthquake. She threw her head back, exposing the skin at the top of her slender neck, thrusting out her chest. Her voluptuous breasts shook and jiggled all too visibly through the thin lace that incompletely covered them. The fair warrior was giving a darkly dazzling display of her body's womanly tenderness, even as the energy invaded and ravaged her sensuous frame.

And then as quickly as it had started, it stopped. The sparks of energy running through 2B's body faded and died. Her musculature began to relax. The agony of her body seizing up eased, and then left her altogether. The uncomfortable clenching in her lower body stopped. She was no longer in pain at all. But as the pain had fled her body, it had left something much more insidious.  
"Uhhhnnhhh..." 2B felt her strength slipping away from her. Her strong shoulders dipped. Her proud, elegant posture slackened. Her long, powerful legs began folding, downwards and inwards, the self-assured, effortlessly sexy way she carried herself collapsing into girlish meekness. She was slipping down, down, down, her mighty body unable even to bear its own weight. Her delicate fingers relaxed so much that her swords fell from her hands, clattering and clanging on the floor as their wielder lost the strength, lost the right, to bear them. And, as if humbled by this disgrace, 2B dropped to her smooth knees, her head swaying like a willow in a heavy wind as she fell, her skirt flying upwards and fluttering in the air, exposing her once again - but this time, though there may have been beauty in the sight of her bare, milky thighs and her perfectly shaped, curvaceous ass, there was no artfulness in it.  
  
When her knees actually hit the ground, a shock reverberated through her sumptuous, pale figure. 2B's thighs and her buxom, creamy bosom bounced, testifying to her softness all too visibly. For a moment it seemed as if she had enough power in her body at least to stay on her knees, but even that was denied her.  
"Aiihhh... auhhh...ooohhhhnnnhhh..." 2B moaned, as weakness surrounded her, entangled her, drowned her, a sensation so unfamiliar that there was a kind of heady, physical thrill in it, even as the vast majority of her emotion was anger, embarrassment, and deep, simple shock. As the ground rushed towards her, she kept feeling as if she could just put out her arms and catch herself. Kept expecting that to happen at any moment. But it didn't happen. She couldn't make it happen. Her chest hit the ground first, cushioning her impact slightly. Her face was next, her right cheek coming to rest against the ground up road beneath her. Then her stomach, then her thighs, and feet, and soon she was lying flat, and still against the ground. " _I'm paralysed._ " The words rang harshly and fearfully in her mind. " _I'm completely paralysed!_ " For a warrior, for one who lived in a world of such constant threat, there could have been nothing more frightening than such abject, humiliating powerlessness.

9S reached her side only a second after she landed. "2B!" he cried, his voice full of fear and anguish. "Are you okay? 2B?!"  
"Hnn... hhhnn..." 2B could not speak, but her mews were enough to let her partner know she was alive, at least.  
"Ohh, you scared the life out of me!" Softly, 9S took 2B by the shoulder, and rolled her onto her back, cradling her head with one hand, resting her back against his thighs. Her body obeyed every slight urging of his as he tried to make her comfortable, her arms flopping towards the ground as he lifted her, groaning at her surprising weight. And she really was paralysed, the curvaceous beauty absolutely and completely limp in 9S' arms. "You're okay," he said, almost cooing to her, using every bit of precision his android body offered him to be as gentle with the lovely maiden as possible. "You'll be alright. I'm sure I'll be able to restore your systems in a few minutes. And even if I can't, 2B, even if your body won't heal - and it will, I'm certain! - but even if it doesn't we can back you up and restore you back to the Bunker. I can already see there's no memory damage. You won't lose anything. Not a second."  
She tried to nod. He was reassuring her. It wasn't so much his words, though he had always been forthright with her in the past and she didn't doubt him now: it was his tone. He spoke with a softness, even sweetness, that 2B never got to hear from anyone else. It was too much for her to ignore, especially in such a vulnerable, frightening position. And then, just as she was beginning to feel that it would be alright, she saw the way he was looking at her.

Or rather, he saw the way she was looking at him. Her lovely eyes uncovered, looking up at him with such open, fetching vulnerability, looking to _him_ for strength, for protection. Her achingly beautiful body, limp and defenceless. As he'd turned her, 9S had caused one of 2B's hands to land, palm down, on her stomach, and for the first time he noticed how slim and almost dainty her fingers were, especially in her stately, white gloves. The skin of her left thigh brushed against 9S' knee, 2B's flesh so plush and soft that it made him shiver. He could feel, too, the edge of her stocking, giving an additional layer of smoothness to the cool finery of 2B's porcelain skin. Her legs had come to rest at rather awkward, clumsy, pigeon-toed angles, almost like her silky legs were so long that she just didn't know what to do with them. It seemed improper to see 2B so weak, so helpless in his arms. But that impropriety made it - it made it exciting. 9S gulped, as his eyes roved over her limp, shapely body. Her thighs. Her breasts. Her mouth. Her neck. Her slender, neck, such a soft throat. Warm and vulnerable. Helpless.  
  
An alien emotion shot through him. He saw 2B's fallen swords, and felt violent, nauseating hatred rise in the pit of his stomach at the sight of them. They repulsed him. And now they were away from their master, and 9S felt his own sword at his back. He looked again at her body, her perfect body, so soft and warm and defenceless. _Defenceless_. Something gripped him. Something made his hands quiver even as they cradled his beautiful partner. Something made his eyes narrow, his pupils dilate behind his visor. A thought injected itself into his mind that he recoiled from, but could not run from.  
" _You want to ****_ 2B, don't you?"

"No!" he shouted, tearing himself from his foul reverie. It was like, for a moment, he had been a different person, and he was afraid. The feeling of 2B in his arms made _him_ feel safe now, for through her he knew himself. But he was wrong to feel safe. His reverie had distracted him so much that the warnings blaring in his ears from his Pod _and_ 042 were unheard. His only warning was 2B's eyes, wide and full of fear, her pretty, moist lips trying to from the words 'look out'. He didn't even begin to turn around in time. By the time that he realised that was in danger, his right arm had been severed from his body.

"Nhh... hhhnnn... hhhhnnn!" 2B wanted to scream. She'd had to watch as the android in white, the android with tan skin and a straight, grey sword, had walked slowly behind 9S. She'd had to watch, powerless to lift a finger, as the android with dark hair and a figure strikingly like 2B's own had raised her sword, with a manic, rictus grin spoiling a pretty face. She'd seemed to realise that 9S wasn't noticing her, because she mimed chopping off his head, stabbing him through the chest, or slicing _through_ his head before the stroke fell, and about a fifth of 9S was carved away from the rest of him.

"Wh...?" he stammered, looking at the wound, the gushing, black-brown liquid that poured from the hole in his shoulder. He was beginning to go into shock, but he nevertheless reached for his sword with his remaining hand, and swung at the android behind him.  
She dodged the blow, swatting his blade aside with the flat of her own sword. 9S was knocked onto his back, and only now took a good look at his enemy.  
"A YoRHa android?!" he spluttered, pain making his voice weak and wavering. "Why are you - ?" He looked at her eyes, to see if she had been infected by a logic virus, which gave its android victims distinctive red, glowing irises. But she was wearing a cloth visor like his. He couldn't tell.  
"Unit 9S," the android said. Her voice was drawn out, so much so that he suspected she was suffering from programming errors. "Yyouu are Uuuunit 9S. I have... a name." She shuddered. "7E."

Still lying limp on her back, 2B gave a long, quiet moan. That 'E' meant that she was an executioner. An android designed to fight and kill other androids. The best that YoRHa had. Just like 2B. That is, just like 2 _E_.  
" _She's here for him. Or for me and then him. She's going to kill him. She's going to kill him!_ " She urged her body to move, for one finger to twitch, one muscle fibre to tense, for _anything_ \- but nothing worked. She was totally immobilised.

What did it mean? Did the Commander no longer trust 2B to monitor 9S? Last time he'd not only discovered that the humans' Moon Base was empty, that the last human had died tens of thousands of years ago, he'd almost managed to leak it to the entire android population of Earth, YoRHa or otherwise. It had taken 2B almost four straight days of arguing with the Commander to convince her that 9S was still essential to YoRHa's work, that despite his insistence on delving into places he should not have gone, his skills and intellect were so important that he just had to be brought back again, that it was worth going through the trouble of erasing all the other units' memories of him again, pretending that he was brand new. As many times as she had killed him, she had saved him - but this android wasn't 2B. 7E didn't know him. 7E didn't love him. 7E wouldn't fight for him.

But 7E didn't kill him. She took his sword from him, yes. She impaled him through the chest with his own weapon, yes, and left him groaning and almost screaming on the ground. But she had not quite injured him fatally. She did not care to. She was not there for him.  
"You," 7E said, leaping onto 2B from thirty feet away, landing right on top of her and straddling her, squeezing the porcelain maiden's thighs between her own, placing her hands on 2B's shoulders. "You're 2... B." She leaned in close, close enough that her nose was almost touching 2B's. "Do you know songs? Have you found any? I've found some. Songs. Poems. I like the one about the Six Hundred. I taught the one about the Six-Hundred to the cans."  
" _Six-hundred...?_ " 2B was reeling. This woman was obviously a lunatic - but the number she recognised. It had been part of the poem that machine had recited to 2B before it had paralysed her. " _She - she taught it to the machines? Why?_ How _?"_

"They didn't want to die, 2B. Toooo-bie. Toobie. They didn't want to die. Knew they'd die fighting you. Most would. Had to convince them it was brave. Had to convince them they'd be remembered. But they won't. I've forgotten them already."  
" _She trained them to attack us... how did she do that? How did she get them not to try to kill_ her _? They wouldn't have listened to her long enough to learn a god damned poem!_ " 

"You're pretty, Toobie." 7E leaned close, whispered. "I've killed lovers too," she said. "Many, many many. Loved them all. Loved them dearly. But I've run out now. I need a new one. Can't be him," she said, nodding towards 9S. "Can't be him, I don't like boys. Has to be a girl. You're a girl. You're a _pretty_ girl. You're a lovely girl. I need to love you, lovely girl," she said, before pressing her lips against 2B's with frightening force.  
"Mhhh....! Mmmmmmmmhhhhhh!!" 2B moaned, helpless to stop herself from being kissed. She felt 7E's tongue probe her warm, wet mouth, felt 7E nibble playfully on her lower lip, stroking 2B's own tongue, taking every advantage of her leggy victim's paralysis. All 2B could do was lie there and take it, utterly devoid of strength.

7E, however, had plenty of strength. She used it to pull 2B to her feet, holding her by the shoulders. 2B's head flopped to the side, her limp legs dragging against the ground. She couldn't even move her eyes far enough to look at 9S, to see if he was at least still alive. But this weakness wasn't enough for 7E. She dragged her captive to the nearest wall, and shoved her up against it. As flexible as 2B, 7E lifted one leg, and held 2B in place with her foot, her heeled boot pressing right in between 2B's pale breasts. It was as if she were trying to display her total dominance over her gorgeous captive - and it was working.

"Can't just take you like this," 7E laughed, never once breaking her rictus grin. "Have to make you sleepy. Have to make you make you soft and sleepy, Toobie." Still managing to hold 2B in place with her foot, 7E reached up towards 2B's shoulders with both hands. She placed her hands softly on 2B's trapezoid muscles, making little pincers with her hands. She slowly moved them up towards 2B's neck, until she found the right spots. And then, she squeezed.

"Ahhh!!" 2B cried out, as shivers and tremors reverberated through her paralysed, helpless body. Bright flashes burst in front of her eyes, and she realised that 7E had done something to her nervous system. "N... no..." she gasped, as she found with horror that it was still possible for her to be even weaker. "Ahhh... auuhhhhhhhh..." she moaned, as she realised that her world was growing dark. She'd already been paralysed, and now she was struggling even to think. She was defeated, limp, and now - now she couldn't even stay awake. She looked into 7E's face with wide, shocked eyes, her mouth open in a soft, pink 'o', in disbelief that such total defeat was even possible.

But soon her wide eyes began to flutter. Her pretty mouth began to fall shut. The rhythmic movements of her perky chest began to slow, and her vision began to fade into vague colours and shapes. She hung her head, or rather it happened to flop downwards, but it was a fair sign of her thoughts.The aching, dull weakness that spread from her neck, down her back, up into her mind - it could not be resisted. Subdued and dominated, the breathtaking, graceful warrior faded and wilted like a cut flower. With a kittenish whimper, she surrendered her wakefulness, and slumber took her into thick, unyielding arms.

"Mmmhhh... mmhhhh..." 7E purred, watching this unmatched beauty fall under her power. Her hands began to rove messily over 2B's body, ruffling her dress, her skirt, only gingerly dancing over her bosoms and her face. "That's it, sleepy-girl," she whispered. "Off you go... nice and safe... all knocked out and so pretty... so tall and strong and weak and floppy..."  
9S, still trying to free himself with his single arm and rapidly dwindling consciousness, heard 7E's words. They made him desperately furious to hear 2B ever called weak, to her the E-unit's absurd, childish cooing. But there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was squirm, and watch. Watch as 7E seized 2B by her coltishly long, flawlessly curvaceous legs, and threw the sleeping beauty over her shoulder. Watch as her dress failed utterly to defend her modesty, her position over 7E's shoulder completely exposing her soft, prominent milky-white ass, whose curves flowed so eye-catchingly to 2B's plump thighs. He could only watch as 7E stroked her captive's legs, caressing them, even kissing them as she walked, rubbing her face against 2B's stockings - and never once breaking that horrible grin. In amongst his anguish, 9S realised there was envy too, and he couldn't believe it, much less understand it. What was wrong with him?

It was much to 9S' surprise when he realised that 7E was coming closer to him. Apparently bearing her beautiful burden easily, she strode up the fallen scanner, looking down at him as he writhed in agony.  
"Pod!" 9S cried out. "POD!! 153, 042, where the fuck are you?!"  
But they didn't come. He might have been conscious, and motile, but 9S was basically as helpless as his partner. 7E obviously considered him no threat.  
"I really don't have a choice," she explained. "It really is vital. I murdered my lovers. I need a new one. I have to. There's no way. There's no choice."  
"Give... her back!" 9S said, realising that he sounded more like a petulant child than an avenging hero. But he couldn't stop himself. "Give her back to me!" he cried out, only just managing to stop himself using the word 'please'.  
"I can't," 7E said, simply. "She's my exchange. She's necessary. Oh, sweet boy, don't cry."  
He was crying, but it was more from the pain than anything else.  
"Here. Let me explain better." She knelt down, her captive's feet beginning to scrape the ground. He tried to pull away, but he was pretty much fixed in place, so she managed to whisper to him all the same.  
"I _met him,_ " she whispered, before adding four more words which didn't mean anything more to 9S than the first three.  
But before he could vent his frustration with her, she was gone. She was gone and she had taken 2B with her. And all she had left him in return were four useless words.

"I. Hear. A. Sound."


	2. "Shiver at the Touch"

Pity her. Pity 7E, for as she staggered forward through the cold desert, she wailed. Pity the pretty, dark-skinned android, for as she tried to bear the weight of the one in her arms, the sand would slip underneath her, and she would trip, and she would drop the one she carried. She would scream, and haul her burden back up, and continue her endless, pointless march.

Pity 7E, for the bronze blood of the android she had slain stained her white dress, soaked right through so that it was damp and sticky against her skin. Pity 7E, for it did not matter how often she shook the small, pretty gunner in her arms, she would not respond. She would never respond. Pity 7E, for she had murdered her lover, had buried her sword in her lover's chest, and had made sure that she would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever come back.

The dead woman had been deeply precious to 7E. She had been called 11G - 'Enjie' - and she hadn't been very clever. She hadn't been very strong and she hadn't been very beautiful by the standards of the angelic pulchritude of the other YoRHa androids. But she had been sweet and optimistic and strangely charismatic. So when Enjie had decided to desert YoRHa, to forsake her duty, she had been able to persuade a few others to join her.  
Of course, YoRHa command had found out immediately. So, as '43D', 7E had been quietly assigned to go along with Enjie's little insurrection. 7E had been ordered to wait until the last possible moment, to wait for Enjie to gather as many co-conspirators as possible. 7E had, therefore, spent a great deal of time with Enjie, and did what she always did with her targets: she had become Enjie's lover. She had spent weeks almost constantly in Enjie's company. She had not only insinuated herself into Enjie's plan, but went out of her way to recruit even more insurrectionists. By the time the order to execute came in, there were ten of them. By the time the order to execute came in, they had become 7E's friends. 

By the time the order to execute came in, 7E had wanted nothing more than to have been 43D for real.

This was the fourth time this had happened. Each time was harder. Each time she grew more and more unstable. But 7E had been so cool, so professional, so composed, that her handler had never realised that anything was wrong. It was only when 7E saw Enjie's tattered corpse lying among the others, the corpse that she herself had ripped life from, that the burden of restraint became too strong. It snapped, and she snapped, and she lifted the body of 11G into her arms and wept, and wept and wept. She drained all the water that was stored in her body's reserves for such purposes, but kept crying. As she bore 11G's body she cried. As she began her long march, she cried.

And for the next ten days, without stopping she cried. For the next ten days, without stopping, she marched. It took her seven days to reach the edges of the desert, another day for her to realise that the itchy feeling in her boots was sand. Indeed, a filter developed over all of her sensations. She was having them, but was only distantly aware of them. All she was fully aware of was her mad, raging sorrow.

The tiredness in her arms, however, she could ignore no longer. Although 7E was many, many times stronger than a human woman of her build would have been, she was not indefatigable. Eventually her thin, powerful arms just couldn't take the continuous strain, and 11G's body fell from her grasp. Whimpering, 7E picked her up again, but only a few minutes later her arms failed her once more. When this happened for the third time, she gave up. She fell to her knees, her heavy, android body sinking quite far into the fine sand. In a sudden, black instant she reached for the sword at her side, tried to pull it out of its sheath. But it was coated with the congealed, artificial gore of the androids it had slain, and her tired arms couldn't get the sword loose. She gave up, and just knelt there, waiting for the sand to bury her, waiting until night had fallen and 11G's body had lost every trace of life's warmth.

Eventually she looked up just because the back of her neck was sore. She saw the stars overhead, and they looked ugly. Dull, white little pinpricks, cold and distant and immaculate. 7E noticed two stars in particular that seemed insultingly bright, poking out from just atop a high sand dune: hot, fiery scarlet, burning and boring into her like two harsh, red eyes. Oh, no, wait - they _were_ eyes.

Someone was watching her.

7E heard the sound of sand shifting as the red eyes moved closer to her, descending the dune to the heartbroken android who knelt at its base. She was just about cognizant enough of her situation to realise that this was probably another android, one infected by the logic virus by the machine lifeforms and turned to their will. Doubtless they would kill 7E, and though some distaste at the idea of falling to an agent of the androids' hated enemy still lingered in 7E's mind, she could not summon any real will to resist. It was obvious what would happen, and there was no avoiding it.

Yet as the eyes grew closer, 7E could not remain apathetic. Her android senses were sufficiently refined that she could see that the red lights of the eyes that approached her lacked the electronic distortion - the 'buzz' - that infected androids' eyes always gave off. This red was deeper. This red was darker. This red was clearer, and it was something that 7E found herself instinctively frightened of. A feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. She'd never felt it before, never felt the broiling, churning disgust of it, and it made her even more disturbed. She didn't know she was experiencing nausea. The E-unit production line had been programmed with it, but the emotion had been dummied out at the last moment, the code locked away and made inaccessible by E unit brains because of the potential for it to interfere with their grisly duties.

It got sufficiently close that, even in the dark, 7E's eyes could make out much of the figure's appearance. It was a little taller than 7E, broader in the shoulders, flatter in the chest, narrower in the hips. Male, then, but too large to be a scanner unit. Not a YoRHa android, then, but one of the Resistance models. They made up the vast majority of the android population of Earth, so it wasn't altogether surprising that his form was unfamiliar. He had shoulder length, brown hair. He had hard features. There was not just red light, but _mania_ in his eyes.  
It made 7E sick. It made 7E sick to see the rictus grin on this android's face, to see his tongue flickering like a serpent's behind his teeth. It made her sick to see an android so corrupted, sick to see that the machines could rip their personhood out of them with such contemptuous ease. A sudden terror gripped 7E's frame, the fear that she too would be overwritten and used as this android had been. Moaning with fear she tried again to take her sword from its scabbard, and while that fear allowed her to bypass her musculature's ordinary safety limits to a certain extent, it wasn't enough to get it out in time. The sword was only half-drawn when the android reached her. She met his crimson gaze, saw how the glow made his teeth look bloodied. 7E had seen predatory animals with the same look, fresh after a kill. It gave him an un-android visage. An organic visage. The visage of a -

"OH!" 7E's cry was far greater, and far louder than any she'd made before. It was so loud that she strained the capacity of her voicebox almost to breaking point. When she'd murdered her first lover she hadn't made such a cry. When she'd seen a whole squadron of B-type YoRHa androids be slaughtered in an ambush she hadn't made such a cry. When 7E herself had had to be reuploaded to the bunker for the first time, after being violently dismembered by a pack of ravenous machine lifeforms, she hadn't even approached the level of emotion she experienced now. But it was not despair, or horror, or fear that overwhelmed her now. It was joy.

She threw her arms around the stranger's legs, buried her face in the tattered cloth of his trousers. She sobbed, her body convulsing with each breathy heave.  
"I thought..." she gasped, her words scarcely decipherable within her sobs. "I thought you were all gone! I thought you were all dead!" She looked up, and smiled, and wept with relief for an agony she had barely been conscious of. "I never believed I would ever meet a - a real - " She couldn't continue. The emotion was too strong.  
The stranger touched 7E's head. For a moment it seemed affectionate. But then, with a silent snarl, he twisted her hair between his fingers and clenched a tight fist. The light in his eyes burned ever brighter, scouring 7E's own, burning the same red as his own into her irises.  
"Glory!" 7E screamed, in ecstasy and agony. "Glory to mankind!!"

He opened his mouth. The sound of bells issued forth, and as they did 7E realised that she and the man were not alone. They had never been alone. They would never be alone again. There had always been someone there. Someone above.

Someone watching.

7E screamed like a child.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _  
_  
  
Ambushed. Tricked. Paralysed. Subdued.

Knocked out. Stolen.

Captured.

The realisation came in illogical dribs and drabs. 2B was so disoriented by what the EMP and what 7E had done to her that in her first few sputters of consciousness she got things in the wrong order. Thought that the paralysis, and 9S cradling her had come _after_ 7E and the machine lifeforms' ambush. Then she found herself rattling off _The Charge of the Light Brigade_ , actually mouthing the words, having a sudden feeling that - yes - 7E had captured her, had knocked 2B unconscious and taken her away, but that those words would help her somehow. Only for her to become cognisant of her disorientation, and realise that the words had merely presaged her captivity.

"Where am I?" she said, finding that her voice came through clearly. She could not otherwise move. She opened her eyes, and white light shone directly into her face. The light did not hurt, but it was psychologically uncomfortable. Without her visor, her eyes felt naked. She lowered them, saw her body, her voluptuous body, lying straight out in front of her, soft and limp and useless. Her slender hands were rubbing against something, making quiet little squeaks as the leather of her gloves ran across the hard, ceramic floor. Tiles, it looked like, the kind humans made by cooking sheets of clay in a kiln. But these tiles looked new. The grout between them looked only barely solid.

2B wondered, also, how it was her hands were moving against the floor if she was still paralysed.  
" _Oh,_ " she thought. " _I'm being stupid. I'm obviously being dragged._ " She was right. Someone was holding her by the back of her collar, and was pulling her along the ground. "What's happening?" 2B asked out loud, finding herself oddly unemotional. She felt suppressed, and it was hard to feel anything except... weak.  
  
Her captor had heard both of 2B's questions, but did not answer. She was not wholly sure how to. Where were they? Well it was a little... room. Tiled, and painted, and fitted with light fixtures. How had she arranged that? What was happening? Well, that last perhaps 7E could answer.  
"I took you prisoner," she said.  
"Oh," 2B replied.

7E pulled 2B's helpless body to the middle of the room, let her lie in place. She folded 2B's hands on her lap, moved away from her. "A little piece of heaven," she said, covering her mouth. From the way her eyes roved, it seemed that she was... admiring 2B. Admiring the way the deadly warrior lay there so obediently, her legs so long, so slim and generously substantial all at once, tucked neatly against each other, the folds of her skirt making a tantalising divot at the highest point between her thighs. Such a trim waist, so lithe and lovely. Her upper body, as slender as a long rifle. Such a pretty face, pale as moon and soft as flowers. Such bright eyes, fluttery from the weakness and heavy from a familiar sadness. So fair, and so forlorn.

7E slowly, almost reverently descended, stroked 2B's cheek with the back of her hand. She moved her hands to 2B's slim neck, closed them around it, but she didn't apply any pressure. But when 7E withdrew her hand, 2B felt something had been left around her throat.  
"What is this?" She couldn't see it, and couldn't reach up to feel it.  
"I've been awful," 7E said. "Been so awful... I know I have to, and you're so pretty when you're limp, but you don't like it, do you? Who'd like it? No-one. Limp as a fish. Poor thing. Poor beautiful girl." She was standing behind 2B, so the captive android couldn't see what her abductor was doing. But she must have been doing something, because 2B felt a surge of electricity through her entire body.

"Aiiihhhh!" she cried, her limbs stiffening and shivering, undulations rippling through her body, waves of tingles that hovered on the edge of pain, but did not quite go over it, her sensuous frame jiggling and dancing rhythmically, helplessly. 2B felt her musculature stiffening and relaxing and stiffening again, felt a burst of contradictory sensation throughout herself. "Wh-what are you doing... ?" she moaned, feeling heat in her neck and her cheeks, but her captor did not answer. "My body - my body's... it's - it's -" And then, as quickly as the ripples had begun, they faded, and 2B sank into a settled, comfortable stillness. "Ohhhh... " she sighed, moving her hand rather daintily to her forehead. She moved her hand.  
_She could move_.  
  
"I hope that didn't hurt too much," said 7E. She knelt down, took one of 2B's gloved hands, kissed it. "I don't want you to make you sad... don't want to make you hurt... " But the small, slim hand that 7E held suddenly curled its fingers tight around her wrist, and its owner bared an angry grimace.  
She didn't know why 7E had given her back her mobility. She feared that her abductor knew something that she did not. But how could it have been a trap? 2B had already been completely at 7E's mercy. She had to chance it, didn't she?

So she sprang into action, using 7E herself as an anchor, she pulled herself to her feet, flipping backwards onto her hands as she struck her captor in the chin with both feet. She landed with quicksilver elegance, and she needed no weapon to show herself to be dangerous. The stone of her bright features and the coiled tension in her limbs made this obvious. She wanted to fight. She wanted to hurt her captor. She felt ashamed of having been kidnapped, and though she was surprised by her pride, she wanted to avenge it. And more than that. Burning in her perfect android memory, the image of 7E stabbing and dismembering 9S, plunging her sword deep inside him, seeing him writhing in agony as his bronze-black blood oozed from him. From the way 7E talked and behaved 2B guessed that she was truly insane, so it would be irrational to hate her. Still more irrational was the maggot of poisoned jealousy that squirmed in 2B's breast. So she just attacked. She surged forward, and struck 7E in the stomach with her knee. 7E barely twitched. She closed her hands around 2B's wrists, and 2B could not free herself. It was exactly as she had feared.

"What have you done?" It wasn't that 7E was just stronger than her. 2B knew, very precisely, how much force her muscles could exert. She had been reduced to perhaps a tenth of that.   
"I'm so sorry, so sorry, so sorry Toobie," 7E said, and she almost sounded like she was sobbing. "I can't let you go. Have to keep you... _soft_." She spun 2B around, making her gasp, and twisted her arms behind her back. She felt 2B struggling, heard angry, indignant grunts. She marched her forward, giggling a little at how easy it was to overpower 2B, who was so tall and strong and fierce, just making her do whatever she wanted. She pushed her up against a wall, felt her squirm, felt 2B's round, supple backside rubbing against her crotch. "So pretty... so pretty... " 7E sighed, burying her face in 2B's thick, white hair, humming to herself even as she began to wrap steel wires around 2B's arms.  
2B jerked and scowled and twisted, but she was completely overpowered. Wire-ropes of galvanised steel were coiled over her slim, feminine wrists, pushing her forearms together, pulling back 2B's shoulders from the tension on her arms, arms which were soon completely fixed against each other from the elbow down as 2B's delicate fingers flexed and strained. She looked over her shoulder, her teeth clenched, eyes wide in shock and shame as she perceived that she was being - she was being _tied up_.

It was not a peril that had ever occupied her imagination. Capture, that is. Death, or viral corruption, or having 9S learn what she had done to him, these were the fears that occupied her nightmares. So as she felt her arms bound fast, by bonds she should have been able to break, she didn't quite know how to feel, besides: "Oh no. That's bad." There was more, but the feelings would not resolve into a clear form, like a tangle in a thin chain. 

7E dropped to her knees with a heavy thud, wrapped her arms lovingly around 2B's long, long legs, embracing them, feeling the slight squish as her arms' grasp compressed the flesh of 2B's thighs, heard the satisfying sound of her leather boots creaking. She nuzzled against the exposed skin just above 2B's stockings, delighting in its flawless softness. Maintaining her hold on 2B's limbs, 7E curled two feet of wire-rope around her victim's ankles, and partway up her calves, her android strength allowing her to curl and knot it like twine, capturing 2B's legs and robbing her body of freedom with a primitive directness.

2B was spun around, face to face with 7E, who held her by her shoulders, keeping their bodies close. 2B felt battle-hormones being pumped into her system to increase her alertness and her strength, but it didn't come close to undoing what 7E had done to weaken her. All it meant was that she felt the shameful bite of her bonds all the more intensely. She pressed her lips together, tried to keep the distress out of her features. She mostly succeeded: hiding herself from 9S had made her a practiced stoic. But her eyes, her wide, bright and expressive eyes, those she could not control. She could only hide them, and 7E had taken that away from her. So now her anger and embarrassment, her confusion and fear - these were perceptible to anyone caring to look. And 7E was studying 2B's fair, moon-white features with microscopic focus.

"So pretty... so pretty... " 7E cooed. "I'm sorry for disgracing you. Making you floppy. Making you weak. Tying you. It's very bad, isn't it, but - I have to. I have to have someone in my place... I have to give something precious... "  
"My friend," 2B said, ignoring 7E's gibberish. "Did you have to cut him in two? Did you have to gut him?"  
7E tilted her head to the side. "He'll be alright. Back to the Bunker. Shiny and new. It's you that I'm keeping. You that I have to - " She cut herself off, shaking her head, before muttering: "The handsome boy will be fine. For beautiful Toobie... it'll be awful."  
She hadn't thought of that before. Indeed, 9S probably would have transferred himself back to the Bunker, to a new body. With a flash of hope, 2B tried to do the same - but 7E's insanity wasn't total. She could not have kept a YoRHa android captive without having some way of blocking them from transferring their consciousness. Whatever 7E had done to make her so weak had probably taken that from her too. Exploring what subroutines she still had available, she even found that she'd had her self-destruct function disabled. She was truly 7E's prisoner.

7E gingerly reached forward, touched 2B's cheek, and 2B jerked away. But to 2B's surprise, 7E got the hint, withdrew her hand. "Why do they make us wear these awful things?" 7E said, gesturing to her visor. "Your eyes are so lovely, Toobie. They're like - like eyes! Like real ones! In a horse or a bison, or a fish, real and - vital!" she said, delighted that she'd found the _bon mot_. "The rest of us... they're all so fake... or we lose our minds and they turn red... but yours are like real ones."  
" _Her eyes are red_ ," 2B thought. " _And she's lost her mind, alright - but the logic virus doesn't make people behave like this. What's happened to her?_ "  
"Angry eyes... " 7E said. She curled her arms around 2B's lower back, pulled the two tighter. "Woeful eyes... deep and deep and deep and... guilty."

2B had betrayed herself. Perhaps as a fellow E-unit 7E had already known about 2B's true nature, perhaps not, but 2B knew that if their positions had been reversed she'd have been able to tell that she was looking into another executioner's eyes. Not all of them were the same: some were cold and defeated; some were crazed like 2B imagined 7E's were; worst of all were the sadists, the ones who had grown to enjoy the betrayals and the murders. But whatever form it took, it was like a little mud-coloured light hovering over them. 2B had never seen what 7E had described, but she believed immediately that 7E could see it in her.  
  
7E saw a change come over 2B's features. She looked suddenly vulnerable, and 7E's overripe heart cried out in pity. Her hands snapped to 2B's waist and her thighs, and she swept the smooth siren into her arms, lifting her sumptuous figure easily into her grip.  
2B gave a surprised little gasp at 7E picked her up, her tall and voluptuous body scooped up and carried so with such light simplicity, her legs dangling, supple calves bouncing. The slit in her skirt opened up almost completely, completely displaying her thighs and her womanly rear, instead of giving only tantalising flashes. 2B struggled, but she was bound, and drained, and no much for her kidnapper's thin arms. 7E was shorter than 2B, the top of her head only coming up to the tip of 2B's nose. If she'd been larger, stronger looking than 2B, then at least it all would have made a kind of sense. As it was, 2B's stature mocked her. Made her look pathetically, beautifully dominated.

Something pushed to the front of 2B's memory, still un-jumbling itself. Someone else had held her recently, hadn't they? Someone had cradled her like this, or near enough, and she'd been defenceless then, too.  
" _Nines..._ " Yes, that was it. She had fallen, helpless, and he had held her. Spoken softly to her. There was for 2B nothing romantic about helplessness, but there was, somewhere in her subconscious, an association between vulnerability and tenderness. And he had been tender with her. As sweet as he had been the very first time around, when 2B had smiled, even laughed a little as he joked and flirted with her. It had been painful, and embarrassing, being paralysed in 9S' arms, but it had been nostalgic too. But then 2B shuddered, because the memory had become clearer, and uglier, and more similar to what she was experiencing now than she'd realised. The way he'd looked at her - the way he'd acted. She'd felt his grip tightening. Seen his jaw stiffening. And like 7E, who cooed over her as she bound and humiliated her, 9S had found a quasi-sexual satisfaction in seeing 2B helpless and degraded. She struggled not to hate him for that. She struggled not to tingle with a dirty, bloodthirsty excitement. 

7E carried her through the length of the room, down a flight of stairs narrow enough that 2B, held lengthways, barely fit in it. Her hair brushed against a window, and as she looked through it 2B discovered that she was quite far from the ground, perhaps ten storeys up. A large tree rested against the side of the building 7E had co-opted. There were a pair of birds nesting in the crook between a large branch and the main trunk. 2B watched them until they had disappeared from view, so she wasn't paying complete attention to where she was being taken. When she looked back around, she found that she was being carried into a room that was almost completely dark. When the door popped shut behind them, it _was_ completely dark.

7E took 2B to what was probably the centre of the room. She couldn't see any better than 2B could, but her android mind was familiar with the space, and she remembered precisely where everything was. She set 2B down on her feet, heard her captive make a soft sound as she tried to balance in the dark with her limbs tied. It was almost cute, and it made 7E feel a surge of irrational affection. She felt as though 2B had revealed something private to her, and with swollen pleasure she pulled 2B close, and grunted as she felt 2B's breasts against her, felt them smooth and feminine and pert, squishing into 2B's chest as 7E put pressure on them, and rubbing against 7E's own bosom as 2B struggled. They battled quietly in the darkness, 2B slowly squirming, feeling 7E touch her, feeling 7E's breath on her neck, feeling 7E's light-brown legs stroking her beautiful, milky thighs. She heard her own breath, her captor's too, and she heard the little ruffles and squeaks of her clothes and her boots as she struggled.  
"Tell me a secret," 7E whispered, intimately, holding 2B in the warm, silent dark. "Tell me a secret, Toobie."  
"Stop it," 2B hissed back. "I know what you _want_ from me. You've made me too weak to stop you, so just get on with it. Take what you want." And 2B heard 7E moan back a denial, could even barely make out that 7E was vigorously shaking her head. And yet she could feel 7E's fingers lifting her skirt.

2B gritted her teeth. She could see 7E licking her lips, though she couldn't immediately tell how she could see this in what was essentially total darkness. But there was a little more light now. Red light. 2B thought it might have been coming from 7E's eyes. She was only half-right, though. Red eyes were making the light, but not 7E's. In the gloom, 2B saw little ruby pinpricks all around them. Heard quiet whirring and clanking from the bodies of the machine lifeforms surrounding them.

Forget everything. Forget all of 2B's pain and distress and ambivalence and guilt. Forget all the features of her personality about which you have come to learn. Forget even that she was an E-type android. She was YoRHa, and the purpose of YoRHa was to kill the machine lifeforms. She was seized by a surging, pulsing loathing, and as 7E fondled her thighs and her backside she felt the battle-hormone pumping hard into her system, a sharp and tangy scent filling her nostrils, fighting against the feebleness that 7E had forced upon her. Above her waist, 7E's won, and 2B stayed restrained; but below her waist, the battle-hormone felt so much more intense, and with a sudden shout 2B snapped the wires binding her legs, and slammed her forehead into her captor's. The headbutt didn't do much more to 7E than surprise her, but 2B followed it up by hopping off the ground, coiling her legs against her chest, and thrusting them full force into 7E's stomach before she hit the ground.

7E wailed piteously from the blow, clutching her stomach and crumpling to the ground. She scrabbled away from 2B, hiding in the dark. She could have fought back: 2B's hands were still bound, so she was at a tremendous advantage. But insanity has its disadvantages, and she was seized by irrational terror, rushing into the nearest corner. She whimpered, crippled with fear. She heard banging and crashing, as 2B's bootheel caved in the face of one of the machine lifeforms, which babbled and scuttled about uselessly, only yet living because 2B had no sword with which to carve them up.

7E imagined that she could see 2B looming over her, magnified to many times her height, smiling with bloody teeth. And as the red in 7E's eyes burned, she thought she could see smooth stone arms reaching from above, arms reaching for 7E to hold her and keep her, and squash her, and melt her and rip her and grind her and twist her and break her and turn her inside out and though that would be what she deserved and though it would be salvation she could not accept it, and she was so awfully, awfully frightened. And since she was frightened, she screamed. And since she screamed, she was rescued.

The machine lifeforms had been rushing about, comically, banging and clattering into each other to the extent that 2B was beginning to think there was something wrong with them. They were the weakest, most basic variety of machine lifeform, yes, but they were still dangerous in numbers, and 2B was unarmed. They should have torn her to shreds. It was just as 2B thought that she'd be better off just trying to escape, when 7E screamed. The clanging stopped. The pathetic, mechanical caterwauling stopped. The little pinpricks in the dark all pointed at 2B. The lights, low and fluorescent, snapped on, and the machine lifeforms, suddenly illuminated, began to advance on her. She crouched low, gritting her teeth, trying to keep her system soaked in as much of the battle-hormone as possible by focusing on how much she hated the clattering, ugly little robots. The problem was that after everything she had seen and everything she had done, she didn't really hate them all that much. She felt the sweet pulse of the battle-hormone fading, and she felt her strength fading with it. 2B's knees trembled, 7E's sabotage reasserting itself. She felt a philosopher's anguish: she would die while still understanding so little.

"Stop!" 7E cried out. No, not cried out. No desperation, no anguish. Instead, volume; and authority. Authority which was at once acknowledged, as the machine lifeforms froze in place at her command. 7E stood, straight-backed and firm, with grace and strength every bit a counterpart to what 2B had.  
For a moment 2B saw a hint of what 7E had been before the madness had taken her, that she must once have cut just as mighty and almost as lovely a figure as 2B's own. Only the eyes were obviously wrong. Through her visor they burned, brighter than before, and they fixed on 2B's which were so fair, and so grey. 2B felt an insight into her enemy that she did not want. The whys and wherefores remained outside her ken, but she grasped something of the nature of 7E's madness. The tall warrior felt very, very small.  
"Restrain her," said 7E.  
"CANANANANAN!" they replied.  
They leapt upon her.

Metal hands around her wrists. Metal hands around her thighs. Metal hands around her shoulders. Like a whirlwind they fell upon her, and 2B was forced with sudden, violent swiftness to the floor. She kicked, shouted and spat, and even with her strength reduced she threw them off her, but they just jumped on her again. She heard something clinking and clattering, felt something cold against the warm skin of her thighs. Felt something hard and metal around her body.  
" _Chains..._ "

Around the smooth, substantial length of 2B's body the chattering, clanking machines wound thick, heavy chains. Her shoulders and upper arms were squeezed in against her chest, her chest itself bound in a series of figures of eight, almost burying her hands beneath steel links, harnessing her bosom, making it strain against the tantalising cut-out that 2B's dress left for the pleasure of the eye, as if they might at any moment burst their bonds completely. Over and over they spun her, wrapping her in metal, securing it with solid, secure padlocks. They held her coltishly long legs, forcing them together, stifling her kicks and with it the last of her real capacity for resistance. Two or three of them bound her legs at once, pushing back her skirt to press chain into her plush, milky thighs, forcing them to tighten and stiffen as they were pushed inwards, her boots creaking as the leather was distorted and squashed.

From her shoulders to her ankles 2B was chained up, eyes wide as she looked down to see herself completely enmeshed. It all happened so fast, the grabbing and wrapping and pressing and the hard, hot frustration of having her command of her body taken from her. 2B jerked and yelled, 2B spat and squirmed, but the machines' hands were still on her, and she could not fight them, was completely captive. There was a loud, heavy click, and 2B thought that they had put another lock on her bonds, but before she could look one of the machines grabbed her by the back of the head and snapped something into place over her mouth.  
"MMPHH!" Soft padding, an almost silky lining rubbing against her warm, moist lips, fixed to the inside of a sturdy, steel muzzle. Gagged, 2B cried out in protest, flexing her back, thrusting out her legs, twisting and rolling her shoulders, using every finely-tuned fibre with which she'd been constructed to try to fight against her steel-bound captivity; a hot, stifled, physical panic giving fury and desperation to her struggles as she felt her limbs hemmed in and caged on all sides, felt even her mouth clamped down and sealed. Then she heard something rattling, metal clanging against the floor, and she raised her head just in time to see that her captors had latched a hook to the chains binding her feet, just before it jerked her up into the air.

"MMPHHHHHH!! MMHHHH!!!" 2B shouted, yanked feet-first up towards the ceiling, hauled up by some primitive mechanical pulley until she was dangling in the air, swinging like a pendulum as her tall, chain-wrapped body thrashed and bucked, so tightly and thoroughly captured, her soft white hair swishing about two feet above the floor. "MNNGHH! HMM-NNMMMHHHH!!" 2B felt her skirt flopping upwards, completely exposing her hips, her peach-soft thighs, and her round, womanly, sinuously gyrating ass, but though it did embarrass her to have her beautiful body exposed when she had not chosen to expose it, intrinsically the idea of physical exposure was not shameful in the to a YoRHa android. But exposure of the eyes was, and without her visor, with her humiliation, distress and helplessness so obviously legible in her features, so open and delicate - that, to 2B, was shameful. And obviously capture was shameful, too. Defeat. Being carried off as spoils of battle. Being chained. Being _gagged_. And there was the way 7E looked at her...

It was known to happen. Androids kidnapping other androids. There were all sorts of reasons for it: infighting between rival factions, extortion, hostage-taking, sometimes even for more... carnal reasons. But it didn't happen often. It was not a major feature of their culture. But then there were no major features of their culture. They had no fiction. They made no art. They made beautiful things, like the Bunker, like their weapons, like 2B herself - but aesthetics were not art. They had no archetypes, no sense of symbol, and so 2B could not fit what was happening to her into a 'type'. There were only the sensations and emotions, and the incomprehensible, bloated sensuality of being tied and touched and stroked. For everything that 2B did and for everything that was done to her, the filter of metaphor, of symbolic shortcut to conversation, was absent. She was naked against the wind of her own thoughts.

"Out," 7E commanded, and obediently her servants filed themselves away, clanking and muttering mindlessly.  
2B had never seen the machine lifeforms behaving like this before: truly like robots, like mindless automatons. Even the ones that she'd fought with Nines hadn't been so servile.  
"I have no sympathy for _them_ ," 7E said. "I hate them. I'd happily rip them all to bits if I could! If they didn't serve me I would. I do hate them. If it weren't for them there'd be no war. No YoRHa. No E-types." She stared at them until they had all left, the last one politely closing the door behind itself. "I don't know why they listen," she said. "Something about -" She gestured at her own eyes. "I can just... _make_ them listen. Something in them makes them have to listen. But we're alone now. All alone, sweet Toobie."

With a shy giggle 7E hopped the distance between herself and her captive. She wrapped her arms around 2B's waist, and moaning with pleasure she rubbed her cheek against 2B's bare thighs.  
"I loved watching you fight," she said. "And you scared me - oh, Toobie, such a fright you gave me! - when you kicked me off you, but it was so _valiant_." She held 2B's inverted body against hers, tingling with pleasure as she felt 2B's struggles suppressed in her embrace, felt 2B's supple breasts pushing against her pelvis. "We're alike in so many ways, beautiful Toobie, but - I'm only an assassin. You're a _warrior_. You're magnificent."  
2B didn't feel particularly magnificent.  
"And you're so... well crafted... " 7E's hands curled around 2B's buttocks, working them, massaging them, soliciting 2B's ignorant pleasure receptors into sending warm feelings through her nervous system. "I could just stare at you... watch you walk, watch you get up, sit down, dress, undress, talk, cry, frown, dance, run, kill, fight, kneel, writhe - ohhhhhhhh - oh you're a _masterpiece_."

She reached up to 2B's feet, gripped them, then slid her hands all the way down the length of her captive's flawless legs, then back up, then all the way back down to 2B's hips, delightedly tracing their contours. And as she did, she kept making these little gasps and cries, and though 2B didn't doubt for a moment that 7E lusted after her, there was something performative about the way 7E was behaving now, something unconvincing.  
"Yes, Toobie," she said, "yes, you're so beautiful... so gorgeous... I l... I love... love... oh _NO!!_ "

She pulled herself away, her head in her hands.  
"It's not enough... it's not enough... I don't love you yet!" Snapping back, she threw herself onto her knees, pressing herself down so that she was looking up at 2B's inverted head, from 2B's perspective seeming to loom surreally over her. "You don't understand. I'm so frightened, 2B. I don't want to be... " She didn't know how to say it. "I don't want to be eaten up! I wouldn't... if I were just going to die I wouldn't do this to you, I wouldn't mind that so much, but - I can't accept the pact, Toobie, I can't... have to put someone... else..." She seized 2B with both hands, gripping her head and forcing her to look straight into the lights that seeped through her visor. "If I love you, then I can betray you. That's how it is for us. Always! Always always! So they can love you instead of me, Toobie, do you get it?!" And as she spoke her voice was not her voice, kept fading in and out, replacing and replaced with a deeper voice, a voice that snarled in the back of 2B's skull as she heard it. "They can love _you_ \- with a love powerful and formidable! A love - a love that CRUSHES! LIKE A MACE! **SPEAK NOT THE W -** "

She covered her mouth with her hands, making a sound like she was being sick. The red light in her eyes faded, partly, and 2B had a sudden sense that 7E had done it just in time, whatever 'it' was. She had another sense too, as she hung chained and helpless in this madwoman's clutches. She had the sense that not everything about 7E _was_ mad.

She had a feeling that 7E's fear was quite sane.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2B had been wrong. 9S had not transferred himself back to the bunker for a fresh new body. He had not been able to. For reasons he did not yet understand, he had had all contact between himself and his superiors severed. Instead, he had been pursuing 2B and her captor. For about an hour after she had been taken from him, he had been able to walk, using his sword like a walking stick, but eventually the strength of his legs failed him completely. He was YoRHa, and he was sturdily built, but even he had his limits. He wasn't even going in the right direction anymore: a dust storm had messed with his internal compass, and he had fallen, lost in the dirt.

Yet even then he dragged himself forward. One of his arms had been virtually severed, and he was suffering from almost crippling internal damage, but he kept going. It was agonisingly painful, and it was terribly boring. And 9S did not cope well with boredom. In his mind he replayed a thousand times the events of the past few hours. His pleasant chat with 2B. The battle. The trap, and 2B's paralysis. His dismemberment. His own pathetic mewling. Watching 7E carry 2B away. And then the long walk, and the pain. Abandoned by YoRHa command. Abandoned even by his pod.

Where _was_ 153? It had vanished during the battle, vanished along with 2B's pod, 042. Could it have been destroyed? Maybe. Maybe 7E assassinated their pods before she attacked them. No - 9S would have detected if 153 had been destroyed. Something else. Something had happened. What had she said? "I hear a sound." Why did he feel like that was relevant? It couldn't be. It was just rambling from that woman. That - that mad _bitch_! She'd sliced him to pieces, taken his friend, left him for dead. How tightly he clung onto his sword, and to the thought of driving it through her heart!

Why didn't 153 answer him? It was just a tool, but he still felt betrayed. And 042 - that was even harder to understand. It wasn't like other pods. It wasn't just 2B's ally: it came across as being protective of her. It would go out of its way to inquire after her welfare, make unasked suggestions to try to keep her safe. It seemed to care for 2B almost as much as 9S did. He just couldn't imagine it leaving her in peril, unprotected.

As time rolled on, and as 9S' crawling grew slower, and as his vision grew cloudier, he started to wonder about what was happening to 2B, what her captor was doing with her. He tried not to think about it: all the thoughts that tended this way were bad, either because what he imagined was unpleasant, or because it was not. There was a part of himself that he did not know, and as the pain spread through every wire of his body, that part became more visible to him. It was the part that made him feel embarrassed when he was around 2B, for he felt so much closer to her than their short time together had warranted. It made him feel like she was his oldest, dearest friend when he had only very recently been assigned to her. It was the part that allowed him to guess much more accurately than he should have been able to 2B's likes and dislikes, what conversations would bore her and what wouldn't - though his success rate on that last count was by no means perfect. And it was the part of himself that, for reasons he could not fathom, blamed 2B for his agony.

He recoiled at this. Recoiled from the hidden knowledge that he longed and feared to attain. So much of him found this thought so repugnant; so much of him just wanted to help 2B because she was someone he cared about and she was in danger; because so much of him was still as he had ever been, in any life, as kind-hearted and friendly as he appeared in the most treasured of 2B's memories. And as she had been afraid of the growing disparity in him, so too did he. He thought of the feeling that had come over him when he had cradled 2B in his arms. He began to worry about what he would do if he found her again, helpless, and he still had his sword with him. And then he just had to force himself to think about something else, because he was starting to suspect that he knew more than he was willing to admit.

He passed out.

He woke up after twenty minutes. He felt something poking at him. He didn't have the strength to look up. He wondered if it was a machine lifeform, and if it was going to kill him. He passed out again.

He woke up again, about an hour and a half later. He blinked. He was not in so much pain this time. He looked up. He sat up. He lifted his hands to adjust his visor. Both of his hands.  
" _I'm... fixed?_ " Not completely. His left hand was still partly numb. His arm was stiff, and it looked like his wound had been... stapled back up. It was a rush-job, but a competent rush job. His internal repair systems, given time, would take care of the more complex aspects of fixing him. He was still weak, still badly hurt, but he was no longer in immediate risk of death. He stood, slowly. He no longer needed even to support himself with his sword.  
"Unit 9S. You have returned to within acceptable operational functionality."

It was 042. With perfect calm it floated, apparently entirely content.  
"Wh... " 9S stared at it. He almost laughed, it was so absurd. " _Now_ you show up?!" he shouted. "Where were you?"  
"Searching for Unit 2B. Then, searching for Unit 9S."  
"But why did you lose her in the first place?" He staggered towards the flat little box, bewildered. "Where the hell were you when that android attacked us? When she almost cut my arm off, and she abducted 2B?"  
"... Elsewhere," 042 replied. "This pod was responding to priority one programming. This pod... had no choice in leaving the scene of the battle. At the time, pods 042 and 153 judged the danger of the machine lifeforms to be dealt with."  
"But where did you go? Where's 153 now? What were the two of you doing?!"

There was a long quiet. 9S could hear 042's processors whirring, running at full capacity. It was struggling to generate an answer.  
"... This pod is unable fully to provide the requested information, due to priority one programming. There was... an encounter with... a hostile. 153 has remained to monitor."  
"What does that mean?"  
"For the operational safety of Unit 9S, pod 042 cannot provide further information."  
"But -"  
"Unit 9S," 042 interrupted. Its tone didn't change, but it had raised the volume of its speakers. It was trying to be emphatic. "On several occasions, Unit 2B has displayed signs of concern towards the welfare of Unit 9S. Unit 2B has frequently displayed signs of prioritising the welfare of Unit 9S above other units. This pod is assigned to support and facilitate the operations of Unit 2B. If the welfare of Unit 9S were to be impacted by the disclosure of information irrelevant to Unit 9S' current mission parameters, the operational effectiveness of 2B would be severely impaired."  
9S opened his mouth to object further, but 042's awkward, clunky sincerity was not so clunky that 9S couldn't see it. As much as it frustrated him to have a mystery dangled in front of his face and then snatched away, he was convinced.

"Pod, I can't get in contact with the Bunker," 9S explained. "You need to tell them what's happened. Send a rescue squad in or - something."  
"Negative. This pod also lacks the ability to communicate with YoRHa command. Total sterilisation lockdown is in effect."  
"Total... ?!" Total communications lockdown could mean only one thing: the bunker was preparing to glass this area with an aerial bombardment. "How long do we have?"  
"Unknown."  
"Pod, we need to find 2B! That android who took her - whatever she's doing we - we have to stop her. Do you understand? 2B is in danger. We need to help her."  
"This pod is already in possession of that information. That information prompted this pod to seek out and repair Unit 9S. This pod has had to wait for Unit 9S to return to full functionality." Translation: "Don't badger me, you little shit, if it weren't for me you wouldn't even be standing right now."  
"Do you know where she is?" 9S asked.  
"This pod has made an approximation," 042 replied. "This pod requests urgency from Unit 9S."  
It was alright now. He could help her now. If 042 was there he wouldn't do... he wouldn't do anything mad. He could help his dear friend. Not in some pathetic attempt to play the hero to impress her, not because of the dark whispers in his mind - just because he was mostly a good person, and it was the right thing to do.

At that moment, five miles to the west of 9S, 7E was covering her mouth to stifle her mad mantra, as her chained captive watched in complete bewilderment. At that moment, about four miles to the North-East of 9S, his pod watched a figure walking slowly in the direction of 7E's lair. Shaggy black hair. Wild, glowing eyes. He saw pod 153. He smiled at her. He opened his mouth, and the sound of bells issued forth. He opened his mouth -

\- and 153 saw the mark on his tongue.


	3. Weep at the Sight

How long had he walked now?

Too long.

How far was his destination?

Too far.

How much pain was there?

Too much.

All the red-eyed man really knew was that he wanted it to end, now. Once, long, long, long ago there was something he had sought. A… piece of something. A piece of someone. Something like that. Something he had once wanted quite dearly. But he could no longer remember what.

A contract. He remembered that. He remembered there had been a battle, a victory, then… fire, and pain, and he had fallen from a great height. He ought to have been destroyed, twice over. But he had been given a chance. Allowed to make a deal - a pact. A chance to seek what he had lost in exchange for servitude.

At the promptings of his masters he had brought ruin, had spread misery and death on an incalculable scale. This meant little to him. He had, even before the pact, been a man of violence. He remembered, though only dimly now, only that he had fought, not why. He had had some cause, long forgotten now.

He had emptied the world. He and the pestilence he had spread. And for a long, long time, when there were no more to destroy, he had been allowed to sleep. But then his masters began screeching at him again, because the world was filling up. With… fake people No, they were people, but… they’d been built. The red-eyed man hadn’t understood. In the world he had known, people still rode horses and lit fires to keep the night away. He could never understand what an android was.

But he could not go on as he had. He could not remember why, but he knew that he was only… half of what he had been. And now, he knew, he would never recover what - perhaps whom? - he had lost. He did not care about the evil he had done, would have done it again thrice over to attain what he desired, but he would not do evil to no purpose. He sought an end. He could not simply die, could not simply break the pact. But he could transfer it. And after decades of searching since his resolution, he had finally found a soul lost and broken enough to accept his masters into them.

It wouldn’t be long until she gave into them, and he would be free.

Soon.

Very, very soon.

____________________________________________________________________________

How beautiful she was, 7E’s moon-white captive. How beautiful she was, dangling from the ceiling, every sinuous, lovingly sculpted curve squeezed with merciless chains. How beautiful she was, her body rigid from the overwhelming, steel tightness of the bonds wrapping her up, holding her, trapping her, embracing her. How sweet the cries from her soft mouth, her muzzled mouth; how enchanting the glare from her wide eyes, her naked eyes; how scintillating the desperate, helpless thrust of her pale bosom; how stimulating the wriggling of her feminine hips. Breathlessly did 7E admire the captive frame of 2B, with a worshipful lust, kneeling before her even as she shackled and humiliated her.

She was cognizant of her madness, partly. She knew that what she was doing was cruel, but that only made 2B seem brighter, lovelier. An innocent brought low by a dirty, wretched sinner, an angelic maiden pulled down from a lofty throne and bound in a dirty pit - but still she shone, unable to be anything but the sweetest, most desperate temptation.

“MMPHHH!!” 2B had not been exposed to the secrets 7E had been, would not have understood this guff about angels and sinners in anything but the vaguest sense, but she was forced to experience the results of 7E’s worshipful passions, for her captor fell upon her with lusty sighs, curling her arms around 2B’s waist and kissing her legs with anguished pleasure, pressing her lips against the leather of 2B’s boots, the silk of 2B’s stockings, the perfection of 2B’s skin. “Ummphh… UHHHHMMMHHHH!!” 2B cried out, bounced from fear to fury to complete mystification. She had all but given up trying to understand what was happening to her. By rescue or destruction she just wanted it to end.

2B felt herself being grasped about her midsection, then lifted, her captor careful to support her neck and her lower back, holding her parallel with the ground. 2B’s legs still pointed into the air, still chained to the ceiling. Her skirt slipped up her thighs, crumpling at her hips, revealing her lower body’s immaculately sensual contours. 2B caught sight of herself, and felt a sharp sense of her own attractiveness. But the awareness was unpleasant: seeing herself both chained and beautiful was degrading.

“Poor, sweet Toobie,” 7E cooed. “Tall and white and wrapped up all tight and squirmy and soft…” She suddenly released 2B, and with a yelp she swung down towards the ground. But 7E grabbed her, embraced her, kissed her thighs and her round ass, moaning, squeezing, before grasping her and lifting her back up again.

“Mhhphh?!” 2B’s hair was dishevelled, her face flushed, her expression one of rather fetching surprise at her sudden manhandling. She looked so off-guard, so vulnerable. It was, 7E thought, unbearably sweet. She kissed her captive on both cheeks, and then pressed their foreheads together, muttering something about how cute 2B was. 2B recoiled: it was cringeworthy, even morbid.

“Do you know what I really want?” 7E said. “I want to have a conversation. I know you’d be so interesting! I want to sit at a table with you drinking hot tea and chatting. It would be lovely. We’d get to know each other as quickly as you like. Those sounds you make,” she said, brushing 2B’s steel gag, “are very pretty, but it’s not - what I need.” 2B could hear a difference in the way 7E spoke. The cooing and the compliments were much the same as they had been since 7E had first kidnapped her, but there was a change. Each sound came out of her mouth slightly slower, and in a lower pitch, as though it were being digitally distorted. She seemed almost to be talking through gritted teeth, even though her expression didn’t suggest pain, or effort. Just lunacy.

7E lifted 2B higher, so much so that her legs were almost allowed to be level with the rest of her body. She leaned down, pressed her forehead against 2B’s, and behind her visor she squeezed her eyes shut. “What I need,” 7E said, “is to know you, my pretty, pretty Toobie.” “Mhh… mphh!” Embarrassed by the intimate contact, 2B tried to move away, but 7E didn’t let her. 2B shook her slim shoulders, but 7E’s grip was more than a match for her in this reduced state. When 7E’s arms were around her, 2B realised, the chains were superfluous. The shame of this renewed a desperation for physical freedom, pushed the mere fact of her bondage, of the fact that she just could not move, to being the most urgent indignity she wished to overthrow.

“MMMMPHHHHH!!” 2B cried, growling beneath the muzzle fixed over her face, thrashing and bucking against the 300 kilograms of chain that tied her. She felt a sort of buzzing where 7E’s forehead touched hers, and though the sensation was not painful it was extremely irritating. 2B felt a hot, itching need for violence, and she imagined a troupe of B-units forcing their way into 7E’s lair, to rescue 2B, sure, but mostly just to cut 7E apart with the heaviest weapons they could carry. She felt the buzzing intensify, and then she -

_“I found a joke book last week,” 9S said. He was lying on his back, fingers tented over his stomach. He and his partner had bivouac’d under a sheet of thick tarpaulin, lying top-and-tail under their meagre, but effective protection. A dust storm raged around them, but they were quite protected. “I hadn’t realised that was a thing.”_

_ “Oh?” 2B replied, lazily. She hadn’t been ignoring 9S, but the sound of the dust swirling about was distantly relaxing. She felt comfortable. _

_ “Mm,” 9S said. “It’s strange. I got quite a lot of the jokes, I think. There seem to be some basic aspects of humour that we and humans share: punchlines have to be surprising, but not random - logic is essential.” _

_ “What do you mean?” 2B asked. _

_ “ Here’s an example - although I’m not sure I’m remembering it right…” He put his arm out as if declaiming. In a deep and performative voice, because for whatever reason this was how he imagined humans telling jokes, he said: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” _

_ “I don’t know,” 2B said, happy to play along. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” _

_ “To get -”  _

“Mmh?!” 2B’s head jerked back, breaking the contact between her forehead and 7E’s. Memory - that had been a memory of… a long time ago now, though 2B couldn’t remember exactly how long. Years? Yes, at least years. Near to the first time she had been… assigned to 9S. Maybe it was the first time. 2B had boxed away so many memories that when they did come to mind it was difficult to get them in order. They were terribly painful, but she’d rather have died than give up even one of them. Still, she kept them hidden even from herself most of the time. 7E had to have done something to her, made her relive this memory with lifelike vividness. How?

“That was…” 7E sounded disoriented. Her grip on 2B relaxed, her head swaying slightly.. “... Never done that before,” she said. “It was kinda intense!” She laughed, her voice cracking and croaking. “Was that the same guy from before? The one I cut apart?”

“Whmhh?!” No. No that was intolerable. Whatever indignities she had been forced to endure at this madwoman’s hand, this was a step too far.

“I think I need to see a bit more,” 7E said.

“No,” 2B thought. “I cannot allow this. I will not!”

But 7E pressed their foreheads together again and though 2B moaned and screamed and bellowed in fury at this most treacherous of violations she -

_“ - to the other side!” 9S declared, grandly._

_ 2B thought for a moment. _

_ “I… think I get it,” she said, eventually. “A chicken is a bird, right?” _

_ “Widely domesticated by humans for food, yeah.” _

_ “So the joke is something like… you’d be expecting some complicated answer about the bird not being able to fly for some reason, and then the answer’s very flat and simple. ‘Well why else do roads get crossed? Dumbass.’ What’s your take?” _

_ “Pretty much the same,” 9S replied. “... It’s not very funny though, is it?” _

_ “It is not.” _

_ At that, however, 9S did laugh.  _

_“See, that I don’t get!” 9S said, still laughing. He sat up, so the two could see each other’s faces. “When you respond like that, I find it really funny. You’re funny, 2B. But I don’t know why. It has nothing to do with logic, and you said exactly what I’d expect you to say, so it’s not surprise either. Something to do with timing, I don’t know…” He flopped back down. He saw that 2B’s hand was near his. He didn’t feel the need to touch her; he just enjoyed her proximity. He felt such pleasure in her company: when he spoke to her, or she to him, nothing in him was bored or impatient. She held his attention completely, this woman of such crushing strength and such delicate, cautious intellect. _

_ For a while the two just lay next to each other. The wind and the sand and the dust billowed about in great torrents outside, but under their shelter they both felt very safe, very content. 2B almost fell asleep, sinking into a dreamlike state of half-awareness. She was very fond of 9S, she reflected. He was convivial, and interesting, and she found herself to be more interesting when she was around him. She was grateful for that, which she thought was perhaps a little self-centred. She had an instinct that her feeling was not an evil thing, though. In her state of half-awareness, she really could not think why she had not asked 9S if he wanted to pursue a relationship with her. She knew he wanted to. So why hadn’t they? What was stopping them?  _

_ The storm passed after an hour. The two androids probably could have left long before they did, but for both of them, time spent with the other was precious. When they sat up, ready to move on with their mission, they found themselves facing each other. 9S’ visor had slipped up his forehead a little on one side, revealing most of his left eye. Before he could move it back, though, he saw 2B smiling at him. She lifted her visor up as well, showing both of her large, soft-grey eyes. _

_ “Come on,” she said, tugging the visor back into place. “Let’s get going, Nines.” _

_ “Yes ma’am,” he replied. In his expression 2B saw surprise, and delight, and affection, and she found that that gave her joy. _

_ As the last of the tarpaulin was packed away, 2B was still smiling. She had not expected this, but she welcomed it. She saw 9S looking at her, and though there was still a shyness about him, he did not stammer and apologise in quite the same way he had at first when she’d caught him looking. In fact, not that 2B knew it, he had just resolved to invite her to his quarters when they next returned to the bunker. Just to spend time together, though. Honest.  _

_In fact, 2B was so distracted that she didn’t realise that her operator had been talking in her ear for the last ten seconds._

_ “Hello?” he trilled, officiously. “Are you there? Unit 2B, please respond.” _

_ “Oh, yes,” 2B replied, a bit sheepish. “Go ahead.” This wasn’t the cheery 6O that would be assigned to 2B later, but 20O, a prissy, irritating android who always sounded as if he was resentful about doing his job.  _

_ “The Commander wants to speak to you,” 20O said. Then after a pause: “Well, d’you want me to put her through or not?” _

_ “Please,” 2B replied. When dealing with her operator, politeness was generally more efficient. _

_ “Fine. One second.” _

_ As 2B waited to be connected to the Commander, she caught sight of 042, hovering about ten metres above her. It was still doing as she had ordered, patrolling in a wide circle to alert her of any danger. But 042 had been assigned to 2B since her commissioning, and she had become aware of some of her pod’s eccentricities. It was bobbing from side to side, the grips on the ends of its ‘arms’ pinching open and closed. In 2B’s experience this indicated that 042 was very agitated. What could be causing it, she did not know. _

_ “Unit 2B.” The Commander’s voice came through in an almost languid contralto. _

_ “Yes, Commander?” 2B was surprised. The Commander very, very rarely spoke to her footsoldiers, even elites like 2B, directly through comms. Since she felt the need to talk over comms, it must have been extremely urgent; since she felt the need to speak personally, it must have been a matter of utmost secrecy. _

_ “An entry in your partner’s personal log has been drawn to my attention,” she said. “He’s already aware of the Bunker’s true nature. Do it now.” _

_ “Do what?” _

_ “Please don’t make this difficult, 2E.” _

_ She didn’t. The two syllables of her true designation were enough to awaken her ruthless duty. Her sword was already -  _

“NNNHHHMMMPHHH!!” 2B screeched, breaking the connection. How dare 7E do that? How dare she, crazed or otherwise, think she had the right to examine the contents of 2B's soul?

“No!” 7E whined. “I was just starting to get to know you! Y - you and that boy, it was so cute, you have to let me see more! You can’t stop me now, it’s not fair, Toobie!” She drew her sword, cut the chain from the ceiling, let 2B fall hard onto the ground with a heavy thud and an anguished cry. She leapt upon her captive, holding her pretty head with both hands, and baring her teeth 7E pushed her forehead against 2B’s again.

She had let herself forget. She had let herself forget she was 9S’ personal executioner, and that had almost broken her. Some E-units could do forget and remember and forget again when it was convenient, but 2E could not. She held 9S’ body, a body that she had split almost in two when his back was turned, and she bellowed with grief, with the blunt division between what was necessary and what was so passionately desired. This agony was not something a human could ever have understood, this feeling that at one time she could not think of a single reason to hurt 9S, and that at the same time she felt completely incapable of doing anything else. It was deeper than mere indecision or ambivalence: it was her predetermined, programmed nature grappling with the personality that she had grown for herself and, for an android of YoRHa, nature would always, always win. 

But for a time 7E had been able to ignore this. She could make it simple. She really could believe that she was 43D, could really love and be loved by 11G without any guilt at all. 11G wasn’t all that bright, but she could talk about most anything and 7E would find it interesting. 11G hated fighting, not out of any moral objection to violence, but just because it didn’t interest her. She wanted to perform, to dance or sing or act, even though she only half understood what an ‘actor’ was supposed to be. But she did dance. She danced for 7E the first time they spent the night together, wiggling her slender hips in a way that 7E found absolutely irresistible. She had danced on their last night as well, gleeful and cheerful and quite completely confident that her desertion would be successful. She had been confident until her spinal column had been - 

“AHH!” Like a dog bitten by a snake, 7E jerked away from 2B, dropping her as her hands moved to shield her face. “How - how did you do that?! That’s not - not fair!” She was crying, viscous tears seeping from underneath her visor. “It’s not supposed to go… both ways…” It was not something she could reasonably have anticipated. E-units were almost always constructed, or extensively refit, with unique abilities. In 7E’s case, she had some of the same programming architecture of an early scanner-type unit, assisting her role as an agent provocateur and an intelligence gatherer. But 2B was assigned to a scanner unit, had been equipped with advanced defences against electronic warfare. They were specifically designed to take advantage of deliberately programmed backdoors in 9S’ abilities, but 7E’s were similar enough that 2B could still protect herself, could still force the connection that 7E had made in the other direction after a little adjustment.

Yet for 2B, her escape from 7E’s probing had come at a higher cost than she’d wished to pay. When 7E gathered the courage to look at 2B again, she saw an expression that she didn’t immediately understand, until she realised that it was not all too different from the expression she wore: one of shame.

“She’s like me,” they both thought. 2B’s defences had only kicked in when 7E had made herself vulnerable, when she had touched a memory that was virtually identical in character to one of 7E’s own. They looked at each other, and each saw a mirror.

Each had been assigned a grim, bloody task. Each possessed a heart that could love, even if 7E loved more quickly, and 2B more deeply. Each in a state of heartbroken desperation. The only difference was that 7E was further along the path that the two of them were walking: she had already lost her mind from sorrow. The realisation of their kinship delighted the one, revolted the other.

But while 2B recoiled in disgust, seeing in 7E an ugly future for herself, 7E saw in 2B her own past. A memory of what she was before she had become so infected, and degraded. Without the crowing, or the crooning, or the morbid affection she’d showered on her voluptuous captive since taking her, she knelt beside her. She brushed her fingers against 2B’s cheek.

“I’m sorry.,” she said, in a clearer, calmer voice than before. With dextrous fingers she unfastened the clamps holding 2B’s muzzle in place, let it clatter to the ground.

“Sorry for what?” 2B hissed back. “For abducting me? For cutting 9S in half?”

“Yes,” 7E replied. “I wish that I hadn’t needed to. I wish that I weren’t such a coward.” She thought of 11G as she was saying this. 11G had been callow; the sort of person who just always assumed that anything she planned would work out fine. But it had been brave still for her to try to desert, and even more so for her to try to bring others with her. She had been a fool. No, she had been an idiot to attempt what she had attempted. But a brave idiot. Could 7E not be brave as well? Could she not just accept the contract that had been forced on her? Could she not just admit that she deserved every ounce of suffering that was coming her way? Could she not show mercy to 2B?

She had to try. She lifted her captive to her feet, trying not to be too rough with her, but to be quick, too. Had to let her go before this lucidity passed.

“Why am I doing this now?” 7E thought. Why hadn’t she been able to do it before? Why had it not occurred to her earlier just to release 2B? To let her go back to that short haired scanner she liked so much and snatch what few moments of joy she could? It was because of 2B, she realised. When their minds had touched she had felt 2B’s sorrow, her pain - but her strength, too. Her fortitude. Her resolve. Her cool head, her reserve, her calm. 7E had, without meaning to, borrowed them, had been able to find a little moral courage.

But not enough. The path that led her back to red-eyed madness was a brutally simple one. 7E’s crooning insanity had been a shield from the agony and misery that had made her wander in the desert with 11G’s corpse for three days. With some sanity restored, though, she began to remember the awful guilt of what she had done, and not just to 11G, but of every murder and betrayal she’d committed before that. She could feel it happening to her, feel the shame and the self-loathing and the instability coming back as the pressure of… of the ones she couldn’t name pressing down on her. She could even see the red glow in her eyes reflected on 2B’s white hair, its intensity deepening, burning. She felt her courage failing, felt the worshipful terror taking hold of her again. Knowing she had no time left, and feeling her arms quivering, she drew her sword, and she raised it high above her head. Her victim saw what she was doing out of the corner of her eye, but she was too tightly chained up to do anything about it. Then the stroke fell.

2B thought that 7E had decided to kill her, perhaps even as a twisted act of mercy. But no: instead 2B found the embarrassing tightness of the metal wrapped around her to ease, slacken, and then fade entirely. Uncomprehending, 2B turned around. She did not spring back, or immediately try to defend herself, just because she was so surprised that 7E had untied her. But even as 2B had begun to turn around, 7E’s courage had failed her. Even as the chains were clattering to the ground, ringing as they bounced against the floor and against each other, 7E had raised her sword high again with both hands, and had brought it down onto 2B’s head - hilt-first.

Neurophysiologically speaking, there were an infinity of differences between a human brain and the artificial brain that sat inside 2B’s skull. But many of the principles were the same. In response to sudden trauma, both a human and android brain entered a kind of ‘safe-mode’, designed to protect higher functions from major harm. So you could knock out an android much in the same way that you could have knocked out a human being. It just took a bit more force.

2B staggered from the blow. Her eyes shot open. She reached towards 7E with trembling arms, but she couldn’t make them do what she wanted them to. She tottered back, then forwards, her vision vague and swimming. Her legs quivered, receiving at first contradictory signals, then no signals at all. 2B fell to her knees, therefore, in sudden and precipitous defeat, a moment whose shame was lengthened by the length of 2B’s shapely legs: she had so far to fall.

“Nh… uhhhh… nhhghh…” 2B sighed, the sound stilted, jumpy and broken. She found her head wavering to and fro, found that her fingers felt numb.Her tongue and her eyelids felt heavy. Her fingers and her feet tingled. Her neck felt too weak to hold up her head, and her back too weak to stay straight. She started falling forward, and in a moment of strange, woozy clarity, she felt very annoyed at 7E’s flip-flopping. She, looked at her and said, quite distinctly: “Make up your fucking mind”, before her strength gave out completely, and she fell onto her side, unconscious.

7E clutched her face, finding that she took pleasure in the sight of 2B lying so limp and so fair at her feet. Her captive’s neck was slightly flexed, her hair falling a little over one eye. Her hands had fallen by her lap, almost clasped. Her upper arms made a sort of triangle across her chest, emphasising 2B’s soft, pretty bust. And not just that - 2B herself seemed soft to 7E, despite all the violence of which her life largely consisted. For 7E had touched 2B’s mind, felt something of her heartache and the tenderness she nursed. She hugged her, lifting 2B up until she was sitting, then pressing her face against her chest.

“So pretty,” she whispered, “and such a sweetheart… I had no idea… .” She felt a deep, deep affection, the grace and sadness and tragic fortitude of the unparalleled beauty she had kidnapped. She lifted 2B’s head, pleased by the calm expression on her face, and wetly kissed her cheek. She was about to try to hack into her mind again, feeling that she was coming very close to the crucial tipping point, where the ones who watched would let her pass her burden on. She almost dived in again, to probe 2B’s mind further, but at the last moment she pulled away, remembering 2B’s defences. No, if she was going to do this, she needed another tactic.

She needed the ‘pheromone.’

____________________________________________________________________________

He sloped closer, dragging himself through a part of a city that had never been beautiful, even in the crowning days of its builders’ glory. With grim purpose he sought that which he had lost - that which had been taken from him. 9S was not going to fall apart any time soon, but what wounds he bore ached. He had to move swiftly. He had to be bold, and brave and good. He noticed that it had begun snowing, though, and he found himself stopping.

He heard 042 droning urgently above his head. He heard himself say, out loud, “What the hell are you doing, 9S? Hurry up!” but he couldn’t get himself to move. He looked at the snow falling, forming a grey slush on ground too wet for it to settle on properly. It made him sad for reasons he didn’t quite understand. No, not sad. Tired. He felt tired. Old. Or maybe not old, maybe just - worn down by looking at dead things all the time. It was strange how he could feel this and feel so curious and excited by so much of it as well.

He had begun to notice more of these contradictions in himself of late. He had even referred himself to the Commander once, suggesting to her that, as a new YoRHa model, there might be some programming kinks that needed ironing out. She had laughed, but not cruelly. She had given him a wry, sad smile, and sent him on his way. In retrospect, 9S thought that she seemed to expect everything he said, as if she had had the conversation before. Perhaps other androids had similar feelings about themselves. Yet 9S was not sure his friends would have felt as he did. That at one time, there was nothing for which his heart longed more than to see 2B delivered to safety; and at the same time feel a little worm within himself whisper that he should just leave her.

But the worm was very little. 9S gritted his teeth, mumbled some excuse to 042 so feeble that he could have sworn he heard the pod scoff, and continued on.


End file.
